By Bob Gaydos

Sen. Mitch McConnell freezes while talking to the press.

   Labor Day weekend offered an opportunity to sit back, relax and ponder the mysteries of the day, such as Mitch McConnell’s mysterious “freezing” episodes in which the senator from Kentucky basically locks up and stares straight ahead silently for about 30 seconds, apparently unaware when the freeze ends that it even happened in the midst of a press conference and his staff acts as if everything is OK, nothing going on here, just move along because the Senate Minority Leader has no plans to retire even though he’s 81 and, you know, had that fall and the concussion and keeps freezing up indiscriminately, which the staff say shouldn’t alarm Kentuckians because doctors in the Capitol and other Republican senators,  who are loathe to get on his bad side, say Mitch is “medically clear” and “perfectly capable” of carrying out his duties and, heck, his term doesn’t end until January of 2027, so why should we tell Americans what’s really going on with his health when we have more than three years to enjoy a position of influence in Washington and at the same time try to latch on to another senior senator who will assume leadership of the Republicans in the Senate because, despite Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley citing “aging” leadership in Washington being a reason to install term limits, once people get power most don’t like to give it up and, as has been shown repeatedly in recent years, some people who want power will do whatever they can to get it, even lie about pretty much anything and, no, I’m not talking about Number 45, but rather, the most recent obvious Trump wannabe, Vivek Ramaswamy, a previously unknown 38-year-old pharmaceutical company CEO, graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination on a litany of lies and bigotry (he says he’s never met a white supremacist and has both praised and mocked the Juneteenth federal holiday), most likely as a way to raise cash and maybe land a spot behind Trump on the 2024 ticket since the four indictments have yet to do much to weaken his hold on the top spot, as contrasted with the position of Luis Rubiales, head of the Spanish Football Federation, who exuberantly kissed a member of that nation’s women’s soccer team when they won the World Cup and found himself facing suspension from his post when she complained that the kiss was unsolicited and unwelcome and the team backed her up even though he now says otherwise after first apologizing and FIFA suspended him for 90 days and then the Spanish government looked to suspend him from his position, a hope that was at least temporarily dashed when a Spanish court, while agreeing to open a case on the incident, said it considered the offense to be merely “serious,” not “very serious,” meaning the government couldn’t immediately suspend Rubiales, which is the kind of court of last resort outcome Russian President Vladimir Putin may be looking for when he meets later this month with North Korea’s reigning strongman Kim Jong-un to discuss a possible food for weapons deal, in which the once admired but recently exposed overrated Russian military gets much-needed weapons for its disastrous war against Ukraine and North Korea, a worldwide pariah with whom almost all nations have pledged not to trade arms, gets much-needed food to feed its citizens so that, much like the seasonally migrating hummingbirds and recurring Covid-19 in New York, they can continue to produce weapons and maintain the Kim family in power forever.

     Or until Mitch McConnell freezes over.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack …”                 RJ Photography

   I think I’m making this a thing. In a world of TikTok, Twitter (no bird!?), streaming and binge-watching, the world we live in is more and more like a stream of consciousness experience.

    So, let me report on the past week in which two events affected me in a personal way, the first being (1.) the death, at 96, of the legendary Tony Bennett who seemed determined to go on forever, singing standards despite Alzheimer’s and being decades older than his collaborators and 70 years removed from his first big hit, “Because of You,” which I sang as an 11-year-old in front of Mrs. Godlis’(?) 6th grade class in P.S. #3 in Bayonne, N.J., for reasons I can’t remember but a memory which still fills me with warm feelings, as does the memory of an old friend, the late, great musician, Hal Gaylor, of Greenwood Lake, who backed Bennett up on bass on many recordings and, like Bennett, was also a wonderful artist, the kind of person you wish could just go on forever, unlike the (2.) Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect, charged with the murder of three young women and suspected in many more on Long Island between 1996 and 2011 and who, it turns out, police in Suffolk County had a solid description of (as well as his truck) within days of the discovery of the bodies 13 years ago but (3.) were too busy covering up an assault by their police chief to bother doing anything about it, which is kind of like (4.) what Chief Justice John Roberts did when asked to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the lack of any code of ethics among the ethically challenged justices, a decision which (5.) prompted the Senate committee to propose Legislation to set ethics rules for the court and a process to enforce them, including new standards for transparency around recusals, gifts and potential conflicts of interest, which (6.) all the Republicans on the committee voted against because the party is too busy (7.) in the House of Representatives trying to manufacture an impeachment of President Joe Biden somehow connected to his son Hunter, who (8.) agreed to plead guilty to tax evasion charges and unlawful possession of a weapon, with no jail time, which (9). a judge questioned and delayed and Republicans said was a sweetheart deal because of his dad being president, which (10.) is pretty much what the Education Department says it’s looking into regarding Harvard’s legacy admissions policy wherein top colleges give preferential acceptance treatment to children of alumni, who are often white (and sometimes rich), a practice which has been under fire since (11.) the Supreme Court last month struck down the use of affirmative action as a tool to boost the presence of students of color, which was in stark contrast to (12.) the same court’s recent ruling that Alabama had to redraw its district voting lines to more fairly represent black voters in the state, an example of reasonable thinking which stands in contrast (13.) to BiBi Netenyahu’s increasingly autocratic Israeli government, which voted to remove the “reasonableness” of an action as something for Israel’s Supreme Court to consider, a vote which (14.) has led to massive anti-government demonstrations and (15.) strained the relationship between Israel and the U.S., which has historically been strong, much like that of American men and baseball, a bond which (16.) drew four relatively new friends (me being one of them) to a minor league baseball game on a Thursday night in Dutchess County, N.Y., to see the Brooklyn Cyclones (a Mets farm team) meet the Hudson Valley Renegades (a Yankees affiliate) on a comfortable summer night billed as Halloween in July at the ballpark, where hot dogs and caps came with the price of admission, peanuts and Cracker Jack were also consumed and the home team lost because of one horrendous inning by the starting pitcher, several bad base-running decisions by other Renegades, a couple of questionable umpiring calls and a leaping catch at the wall with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning by the Cyclones’ right fielder to take a game-tying home run away from Spencer Jones, the Renegades player everyone says is the next Aaron Judge, who (17.) reported to Tampa, to practice swinging again with the toe he injured a while back breaking down a wall in right field in Los Angeles while taking a home run away from the Dodgers, who used to play in Brooklyn where the world-famous roller coaster called the Cyclone is located and (18.) who says there’s no symmetry in this world?

(PS: Cracker Jack boxes are now smaller, but come in a pack of three ($4) and the “prize” is a code to some online game. I preferred the whistle.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
… holds hearing on AARO

What with all the news all the time being all things Trump these days, it has been easy to lose track of some of our elected representatives not directly involved in that slog through history.

For example, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, always an active, outspoken member of the upper chamber of Congress, had fallen completely off my radar. As a New Yorker, I assumed she was working diligently and, well, no news is good news, right?

       Then she recently reappeared in as unlikely a place as I could imagine and, almost literally, back on the radar.

        Remember those “Chinese” balloons flying over the United States a few months back? Perhaps you’ve seen on TV recently released Navy videos of strange objects their pilots couldn’t identify. UFOs. Or, as the government prefers to call them today, UAPs. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

      They’re on Gillibrand’s radar. She is chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. As such, she is charged with overseeing that government agencies charged with identifying, assessing, protecting against and notifying Americans about any emerging threats — identifiable, flying or not — are doing their jobs. Especially that notifying part.

     Those balloon sightings and recent public comments by a recently retired high-level intelligence officer that the government has had a long-standing secret program of crash retrieval and reverse engineering of unidentified spacecraft of “non-human origin,” have given sudden urgency and immediacy to Gillibrand’s Senate post. And she’s taking it seriously.

     She and Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, succeeded in adding an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill requiring that any private enterprise which has been given a contract to retrieve, research or re-engineer anything discovered from unidentified, non-human phenomena make that information known to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

     That mouthful of an office was established in 2022 for the express purpose of resolving decades of UFO reports … and non-reports. Its report, due in June of next year, is supposed to include “any program or activity that was protected by restricted access that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to Congress,” and “any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or provide incorrect unclassified or classified information about unidentified anomalous phenomena or related activities.”

      Any coverups.

      Typically serious about her responsibilities, Gillibrand fought for and gained additional funding for AARO, so that it could actually perform the function for which it was ostensibly established. Previously, it just had enough funding to cover office expenses. A front.

     Gillibrand wants any private businesses to report to AARO about any involvement in such retrievals and reverse engineering efforts and the requirement includes substantial financial penalties for anyone refusing to do so or hiding such information.

     The interesting thing about the claims made by the whistleblower, David Grusch, is that nobody in the government tried to quickly shut him up.

     Gillibrand’s subcommittee held both a classified closed hearing and an open hearing on AARO in April. Its director, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick was the sole witness. He testified: “I should state clearly for the record that in our research AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics. In the event sufficient scientific data were ever obtained that a UAP encountered can only be explained by extraterrestrial origin, we are committed to working with our interagency partners at NASA to appropriately inform U.S. government’s leadership of its findings.”

   Does Gillibrand believe Grusch or others who have reported witnessing non-human vehicles or other phenomena for decades?

     “I have no idea,” she recently told a reporter who asked her. “So I’m going to do the work and analyze it and figure it out.”

     She’s back on the radar.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

     Exhale, America, you survived another election in the era of Trumpism. Apparently, some of you did learn history’s lesson on complacency enabling the spread of fascism. Not that the purported defenders of democracy — a free press — did much to help the cause.

       The “surprising” results of the 2022 midterm elections, as characterized by the mainstream media, once again demonstrated the dubious reliability of political polling and the very real risks of news agencies relying heavily on them to “predict” what is likely to occur when people give their actual opinions at the ballot box.

        The “red wave” of Republican victories predicted to occur across America failed to materialize this year, even though in midterm elections the party out of power is “supposed to” make gains because people are fed up with the current president and his policies. That’s what the political “wisdom” is and that’s the bias that goes into much of the polling and the reporting on the campaigns.

         But this year it didn’t happen. Democrats maintained control of the Senate and may have an even stronger hold depending on a runoff election in Georgia. And Republicans are likely to have only a slim margin of control in the House. And, there was no avalanche of Republican election deniers being swept into office in state elections on the strength of a Trump endorsement.

        What happened? Apparently, abortion did matter. Democracy did matter. Ukraine did matter. Inflation? Yes, it hurts. But voters obviously felt they would survive it again and, just maybe, President Joe Biden wasn’t to blame. 

        But you’d have had a hard time knowing that pre-election if you listened to the loudly opinionated “newscasts” on television and the carbon copy reporting in most newspapers, much of it based on information provided by pollsters, many of them funded by Republicans. Did anyone reporting on the polls consider that a basic Republican strategy the past several years has simply been to lie?

      Of course, by constantly repeating the polls’ supposed prediction of what was likely to happen on Election Day, the media did create a lot of anxiety among a lot of people. And maybe that got more people (especially young people) to vote who might otherwise have sat this one out. But that would only mean that the basic assumption of most polls and much reporting was incorrect to start with: that Americans were fed up with inflation and Democratic spending and eager to embrace Republican policies.

    Republican “policy” under Trump has been to divide and conquer, lie and cheat, make voting harder, restrict freedoms of non-white, non-straight, non-Christian, non-male Americans, provide tax cuts for the wealthy, dumb down the public education system, promote violence against political opponents … and blame Democrats for everything. 

      That’s a lot of alienation. It’s a lot of restriction. It’s budding fascism, in fact.

       A lot of Americans apparently noticed. Not nearly enough, but enough to prevent total chaos in Washington and to provide time to take stock of what direction this purported beacon of democracy wants to pursue.

       In its unflagging pursuit of win-or-lose, horse-race reporting based on increasingly unreliable polls (do you know anyone who actually answered a poll?), the only thing positive to say about the job of the American press on this story is that it might’ve scared enough previously unconcerned people into voting and proving the predictions of the “experts” to be wrong.

      That would mean a lot of Americans deserve credit for recognizing, for many of them perhaps the first time, the real threat to democracy represented by the Republican Party’s capitulation to Trumpism. It also means that reporters ought to be talking to more real Americans, real voters, before writing about what those Americans supposedly think. It’s important, because the threat, while weakened, has not disappeared.

       There’s a lot of arguing among Republicans today about who’s to blame for their party’s disappointing (to them) election results. (I’d say they all are.) A lot of them blame Trump himself, which is a change, and Trump himself faces several serious legal actions. But the threat is still alive and well in some elements of the Republican Party. Start talking with voters in Florida and Texas, reporters. Trumpism may or may not be fading, but fascism is always looking for another face. 

rjgaydos@gmail.com    

By Bob Gaydos

The insurrection.

   A president of the United States actively sought to overthrow the results of a legitimate presidential election through a variety of lies, fraudulent claims, illegal maneuvers and political pressure, even though some of his closest advisers, including his attorney general, told him there was no basis for challenging the election. That same president, knowing he had no legitimate basis for his efforts to reverse his defeat, then encouraged thousands of supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol to prevent the formal certification of the election of the new president and pressured his vice president to invalidate the vote when presiding over the U.S. Senate and went so far as to publicly ridicule that vice president for refusing to do so, further inflaming the angry mob marching on the Capitol. That president then refused for hours to order any kind of police or military support to go the Capitol to help an overwhelmed Capitol police force when the mob stormed into the building, attacking police, sending members of Congress running into hiding, ransacking offices and erecting a gallows to hang the vice president.

    We know all this because (a) we witnessed it live on television when it happened and (b) members of that president’s political party and his own family have now testified so under oath before a congressional hearing.

    A president of the United States of America orchestrated a failed coup attempt. I still can’t wrap my head around that.

      Worse yet, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that millions of Americans, purportedly raised and educated in the land of liberty and justice for all, still defend that president and many at least pretend to still believe that he was denied a legitimate victory and had nothing to do with the Jan. 6 Insurrection.

     Finally, I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that many Americans still don’t seem to understand or care about what Donald Trump and his power-hungry Republican sycophants, apologists and army of racist goons tried to do — install a president by force, against the will of the people. 

    Actually, one more thing I can’t wrap my head around: The wife of a Supreme Court Justice was part of the plot to overturn the election and her husband refused to recuse himself from any cases arising from the effort. A lot of Americans don’t seem to grasp the unacceptability of that situation either.

    I don’t know if the current attorney general has the guts and sense of duty to bring charges of treason where they apply. I don’t know if the owners and purveyors of phony information on the Fox TV network will be held accountable for fomenting racial and political tension in America. I don’t know if anyone will again be allowed to teach true American history in Republican-governed states.

   Personally, I hope all three happen, but I can’t wrap my head around the fact that too many Americans still don’t grasp that democracy itself is at stake.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith goes to Washington,“ Hollywood’s version of the filibuster.

     “If it’s good enough for The New York Times, it’s good enough for us.”

      With those words of wisdom, a newspaper editor gave a willing but wary member of his staff a gentle shove into the world of editorial writing. The staff member was me. The editor was Bill Kennedy. The newspaper was The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. The time was late November, 1983. My maiden piece had appeared on Nov. 23,1983, the 20-year anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Serendipity. JFK and I share a birthday.

       On this day, I was asking Bill about an editorial I was thinking of writing, but which The Times, which circulated in our area, had just voiced an opinion on that morning. It was pretty much the same as what I had in mind and I was a little annoyed that they “beat” me. An ego thing.

      “Do we care?“ I asked.

      “Do our readers care, or even notice?” Bill answered.

      I wrote the editorial. The topic has long since been lost in my memory. But Kennedy’s message remained.

       It came to me in a flash a couple of weeks back as I was having a debate with myself on the wisdom of scrapping the Senate filibuster. I had pretty much decided I was all for it because, honestly, I am up to my eyeballs in Mitch McConnell single-handedly trying to destroy this country for anyone but the super-rich and super-white. With him as Senate majority leader for 10 years, any meaningful piece of social legislation proposed by Democrats had no chance. Now, as minority leader, he threatens to use the filibuster to kill Democrats’ sweeping voter reform law while having the gall to claim that Democrats refused to negotiate on it with Republicans.

         My only hesitation in writing this piece was that even some Democrats were defending the filibuster because of its “ttradition“ in the Senate and its supposed protection against a super majority running roughshod over democracy. Those arguments had pretty much lost out and I also thought about the threat the filibuster would pose to immigration reform, criminal justice reform and anything else President Biden might propose to advance racial and cultural harmony in the nation in the wake of four years of the divisive Trump administration.

         Enough of McConnell, already, I said to myself. Let’s save the country while I’m still alive to appreciate it. And then there was the Times editorial: “For Democracy to Stay, the Filibuster Must Go.”

        Well, thanks, Bill.

         Of course, I was so upset that I let them beat me on writing the editorial and didn’t want people to think I just copied theirs, that I waited a good two weeks before sitting down to do mine. This is it. The filibuster must go.

         Here’s why.

         Even though it is promoted as a barrier to a majority abusing its power over a minority, its primary application from the beginning has been to allow a minority of senators to exclude minorities in America from enjoying the rewards of democracy. First, it was slavery. More recently, civil rights legislation. Forget Jimmy Stewart in the movies. It is an outdated tool that has been used to preserve and promote bias. And for all it’s “tradition.” the Senate has already written exceptions into the rule.

         A brief description of the filibuster rule is appropriate here. When the Constitution was written, the framers kept it simple. In order for a bill to pass in the 100-member Senate, a simple majority of 51 votes was all that was needed. When Southern members took to long-winded floor speeches (filibusters) to delay or deter votes to abolish slavery, a rule was approved that requires the votes of 60 senators to end a filibuster.

        Modern senators being less fond of doing the actual work of talking for hours on end, in relays if necessary, to defeat a bill, amended the rule so that any senator can delay a vote on, and maybe defeat, any bill, simply by sending an e-mail saying he or she is filibustering it. That’s it. Go to lunch.

       In effect, that means the bill sponsor has to find 60 votes instead of 51. And, of course, there is no real debate on the bill. The Senate has already excluded money-raising bills and the appointment of federal judges and Supreme Court justices from the filibuster, allowing, most recently, Donald Trump to appoint three new justices to the high court.

         Some (including two Democrats) have suggested going back to the talking filibuster so that there is actual effort required to oppose and maybe some debate on the bill. But there has seldom been any debate provided by the filibuster and, even assuming Republicans are willing to argue for hours on end against expanding voting rights, Biden and the Democrats don’t have the time to waste.

          With Georgia leading the way, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are passing laws to make it much more difficult for members of minorities especially to vote. Basically, that’s un-American. More to the point, it’s racist as hell.

         The only way Republicans win congressional races in a lot of areas is by gerrymandering voting districts so that their candidate has a majority of Republican voters in the district. Even in Georgia, though, that failed when Democrats managed to put together a major get-out-the-vote effort. Republicans are basically scared to death they will not get elected again.

           Being able to vote should be one of the easiest things to do in this country. It’s almost insulting to have to write a column arguing that point. The fact that Republicans lied about the presidential election being stolen from Trump — and some still do — and make no bones about imposing restrictions on people’s ability to vote suggests that there is no debate to be had on this issue. Republicans just don’t want minorities to vote. They are not concerned with changing their policies to attract the voters, just denying the votes.

          Democrats have the presidency and control of both houses of Congress (but only the slimmest of majorities in the Senate) for two years. Midterm elections often produce changes in the power structure. Democrats can go a long way to repairing the damage done in the last four years by the Trump administration. (Biden has already started.) Democrats can go even further by passing sweeping voters rights legislation that will ensure that Congress is truly representative of the majority of the people rather than in the hands of a tyrannical minority interested only in power, not governing.

         Of course, what I just said is pretty much what The New York Times editorial also said. What can I say, great minds think alike. If it’s good enough for The Times (sorry, a slight edit, Bill), most of the time, it’s also good enough for me.

(Personal note: I wrote editorials for The Record for 23 years until I retired. Thanks, Bill.)
rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

Fans of Woodstock may have a choice of two 50th Anniversary concerts to choose from. Or maybe not.

By Bob Gaydos

A look at the news, by the numbers:

• 7: The percentage of the United States Senate that is running for president (so far) in 2020. All seven are Democrats and four of them are women. The latest count of Democratic presidential candidates stands at 20, I believe, but I could have missed a mayor or state senator or part-time legal clerk who decided that, what the heck, since 2016 proved that anybody really can get elected president in America, why not me?
• 53: The percentage of the United States Senate that is perfectly comfortable with having a president with no understanding of the Constitution or respect for the rule of law, not a modicum of empathy, who lies as naturally as others breathe, has the IQ of a hedgehog (sorry, hedgehogs)  and the curiosity of a Big Mac, is totally consumed with his own image and how much money he and his family can wring out of the presidency before he bankrupts it like everything else he’s touched. All 53 are Republicans. The GOP, of course, used to be the party of law and order, the party that preached moral values and respect for the Constitution. Today, not so much.
• 311: Reportedly, the number of grams of food per day Kim Jung-un, North Korea’s leader, says will be rationed to each citizen as the result of the latest food crisis to hit his nation. A bad harvest left the country 1.36 tons short of grain. The bad harvest came on top of dry spells, abnormally high temperatures and floods, which exacerbated limited supplies of fuel, fertilizer and spare parts, all of which was punctuated by economic sanctions against the country for its continued nuclear weapons buildup. For comparison, the average amount of food a healthy person eats daily in a non-rationed nation is four pounds. That’s about 1,800 grams. The North Korea ration diet is mostly rice and kimchi (cabbage), very little protein. About 10 million people — about 40 percent of North Korea’s population  — are affected by the food shortage. Of course, not Kim and his friends, or those who have access to the black market.
• 3 million: Number of North Koreans estimated to have died in that nation’s famine in the late 1990s, when the ration system collapsed. The question is whether Kim is willing to continue the family tradition of letting millions of  countrymen and women die rather than abandon his nuclear (also chemical and biological) weapons, hoping that Russia or China will come to the rescue. Or, to put it another way — are the rest of the nations of the world willing to let tens of thousands of people die of starvation while they try to figure out how not to nuke each other to death? History is not on the side of hungry North Koreans.
• 1: The number of times the winner of the Kentucky Derby has been disqualified for interference. This year’s 145th Run for the Roses saw the first-place finisher’s number taken down for interference, and not even for interference with the horse eventually declared winner. Maximum Security, the favorite and clearly the best horse in the field, drifted to the outside, preventing War of Will, a legitimate challenger, from moving forward. After watching a video of the race for 20 minutes, stewards stripped Maximum Security of the win and named Country House, a 65-1 shot, the winner.
• $132.40: Payoff on a $2 win bet on Country House. Nice.
• 1: Number of days it took for Trump to say ignore what you see on the tape, forget the rules, the storyline called for Maximum Security to win, so the stewards’ decision was — here comes the buzzword, cultists — “political correctness.” “Bad decision.” To him, all the world is a reality TV show for which he writes the script.
• 2: Number of Woodstock 50th Anniversary celebrations planned for August 15-16 this year. Michael Lang and Woodstock LLC,, had 50 years to plan the ultimate tribute to the iconic festival without the confusion of the original gathering, but just as the 1969 event got bounced around and suffered from a significant error in available crowd accommodation, Woodstock 50, planned for some reason for Watkins Glen, is a whirl of confusion. The event’s major financial backer, Dentsu Aegis Network’s Amplifi Live, said in a statement: “Despite our tremendous investment of time, effort and co mmitment, we don’t believe the production of the festival can be executed as an event worthy of the Woodstock Brand name while also ensuring the health and safety of the artists, partners and attendees.” Lang said his partners had no right to cancel the event and that it was still on, even though you couldn’t buy tickets on the web site. Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus are still coming, Lang assured. He’s suing Dentsu Aegis. Subsequent reports pointed out that, while Watkins Glen is noted for auto racing (the festival is planned for the racetrack), the community does not have hotel and bed and breakfast accommodations to handle the size crowd expected for Woodstock 50. Sound familiar? That means a lot of the space would have to be allotted for campers, which would then cut down on the allowable crowd space, which would then cut down on profits, which would then make Lang’s financial backers’ cold feet explanation more honest. Lang insists Woodstock 50 will be held in Watkins Glen, Aug. 16-18. Oh, that happens to conflict with another 50th celebration of Woodstock at the original site in Bethel. It’s called A Season of Song & Celebration and will be held Aug. 15-18 at Bethel Woods. Naturally, the state is planning major roadwork on the perennially clogged main road to that site during the time the concert is scheduled. Should be like old times.
• Zero: Chances that folks who get to a concert at either of these sites will care about the mixups. Peace and love.
• 50-50: Odds Trump will have something to tweet about Woodstock, which, of course, was his idea until Lang stole it. The 1969 crowd would’ve been huuuger if the Donald’s name was on it.
• 30. It’s a journalism thing. Google it.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

John McCain … not going quietly

‘It doesn’t matter; he’s dying anyway.”

The words, relayed to the world via the Internet, were spoken by a White House aide about Sen. John McCain, who is stricken with brain cancer, but they could just as well have been another shovel of dirt on the remains of what once was the Republican Party,

In fact, when McCain, who is not going quietly, does succumb, it could fairly be said that any meaningful remaining link to what once was the Grand Old Party will have been lost. In truth, the party has been brain dead for years.

When I first read the comments attributed to White House special assistant Kelly Sadler I was angered, but not surprised. Not these days, not with this administration. Cruelty is a staple.

The comment was made during a staff meeting about the Dotard-in-chief’s nomination of Gina Haspel to be CIA director. McCain had voiced strong opposition to the choice even as he battled cancer at his home in Arizona. The comment was apparently intended as a joke, which did not go over well, but was quickly swept off the table.

But the telling thing about the comment is what followed from her boss and from members of the Republican Party who have known McCain for decades and who, not insignificantly, made him their presidential nominee in 2008.

Nothing. For days. Nothing. No cries of outrage at the disrespect for a party elder and the blatant lack of humanity in the remark. No thought of the impact on McCain’s family. No calls for Sadler to be fired. No call from the boss saying, “You’re fired.”

We’re told that Sarah Sanders, White House press secretary, did chew out the staff, not for the comment, but for someone leaking the comment. Someone leaked the Sanders chewing-out. Now they’re trying to fire the leakers.

This is the world of Trump, from mocking a reporter with a physical disability — at a campaign rally where it drew cheers — to declaring that McCain, a Navy pilot who was shot down, captured and endured years of torture in Vietnam, was “no hero” because he was captured.

This, from the man whose alma mater, New York Military Academy in upstate New York, makes no mention on its web site of the fact that one of its alumni is president of the United States. That would normally be considered a good recruiting tool, but there’s nothing normal — or decent — about this presidency.

Again, this speaks volumes about the Republican Party and so many who identify themselves as Republicans yet have not a word to say publicly about the man who has infused the office he holds with a level of greed, ignorance and callousness that is at times mind-numbing. It’s one thing to make a mistake, to be conned, to exercise bad judgment. It happens to everyone. It’s quite another thing to be unable to admit the mistake, to say I was conned, I was stupid, I was greedy, I was foolish, I was wrong. I’m sorry. I regret my choice.

McCain said it recently, about his fateful and perhaps politically fatal decision in 2008 to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate, instead of his good friend, Sen. Joe Lieberman. That decision did much to strengthen the wingnut, know-nothing branch of the Republican Party which gives Trump free rein today. Choices have consequences.

Lest I be accused of getting on my high horse, slinging arrows of accusation as if I had never succumbed, let me admit to a choice I unequivocally regret making — writing an editorial endorsing George W. Bush’s decision to attack Iraq. I can try to justify it by saying I had a great deal of respect for Colin Powell, who was secretary of state, and that his presentation to the United Nations claiming Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction was convincing. No matter. The fact that it was a Bush/Cheney/CIA lie did not occur to me and I let myself be convinced even though I had always believed that the United States did not, would not, should not attack another country. I wrote the editorial. I was conned. I was wrong. I regret it.

Trump, vindictive to the core, obviously resents McCain’s dramatic, late-night, thumbs-down vote that doomed the GOP effort to kill Obamacare. It was a good moment for McCain, who has had a less-than-perfect record as a senator. I have not always applauded McCain’s decisions, but in terms of statesmanship, leadership, patriotism and basic decency, he has it all over Trump. And yet, the silence persists from McCain’s Republican colleagues in Congress about a White House aide joking about him dying.

Haspel, who ran a CIA torture facility and destroyed records connected with it, was confirmed by the Senate as the new CIA director. Bad decision. McCain, who knew torture first-hand, objected strongly to her nomination. Trump thinks torture, which is illegal, is just fine. In fact, he’d like more of it. He’d probably really like to promote the female aide who joked about McCain dying, but will settle for firing the aide who leaked the comment. Having compassion is a dangerous trait in this White House. In the Republican Party, which can’t bring itself to say Donald Trump was a mistake, compassion has long ago been discarded.

May John McCain live on for days and weeks and months and even years as he valiantly battles his disease. The Republican Party for whom he once was the standard-bearer is dead and gone.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Donald Trump and mentor Roy Cohn.

“Slime ball.”

That’s how the man with all the ‘‘best words,” the man who “know(s) words” replied when a man he had once fired called him a liar and compared him to a mob boss.

The man who had been fired, James Comey, also happened to be the former director of the FBI and also happens to have written a book in which he says the man who fired him was overly concerned with proving that he had never been involved in a situation that included Russian prostitutes and people urinating on each other. “Do I look like a guy who needs hookers?” Can you imagine me in such a situation? the former FBI director says his former boss asked him in the Oval Office.

This is where Donald Trump has taken the office of president of the United States. And, just to get it out of the way, yes, I can imagine Trump in such a situation. That’s the problem, America.

Think about it. If it didn’t happen, then there’s no way for someone to prove it did. And in this country, prosecutors — even special prosecutors — have to prove you did something wrong, rather than you proving you didn’t. It’s called the presumption of innocence, a commodity this administration has flushed down the toilet, along with any semblance of dignity.

There is no shame in the White House. We are reminded of this daily, with lies, big and small. Payoffs to cover up extra-marital affairs. Blatant racism, nepotism and corruption. An aversion to the rule of law and an ignorance of the Constitution. An aura of pettiness, shallowness and vindictiveness. Utter disdain for the poor or disadvantaged. And smiling all the time.

So, too, with the Republican Party as it bows at the feet of Trump, a Russian puppet now clearly its leader. There is no shame. No sense of decency. “At long last,” I find myself asking rhetorically of the Republican Party, “have you no sense of decency?

Well … history offers an answer.

Those words were first uttered in 1954 by Joseph Welch, a Boston lawyer hired by the Army — the U.S. Army — to defends itself from charges by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, of lax security at a secret Army facility. McCarthy had used his position as chairman of the  Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to intensify his ongoing crusade to weed out what he claimed were hundreds of Communists working in the State Department and other federal agencies as well as in private industry, notably entertainment and the arts. During an endless round of hearings brutally conducted by McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn (remember that name), witnesses were accused, insulted and relentlessly grilled. “Red-baiting.”

Finally, during the three-month-long, televised Army-McCarthy hearings, the senator charged that one of Welch’s young lawyers, who was not working on the case, at one time had ties to a Communist organization. He pressed the issue. Welch had had enough. “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” he said. As McCarthy tried to continue, Welch interrupted:  “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

McCarthy, finally, was done. Someone had called him a bum to his face. He was eventually censured by the Senate and scorned by his own party. But careers were destroyed, lives ruined, families and friendships broken because of an unfettered campaign of reckless accusation and fear-mongering conducted by a publicity-hungry politician being advised by a ruthless lawyer, Roy Cohn, for whom nothing — facts, lives, careers … decency — mattered.

Roy Cohn, it turns out, was a younger Donald Trump’s lawyer, confidante and social secretary for many years in New York City. “If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent, you get Roy,” Trump once said.

The student learned from his mentor. Trump testified as a character witness at Cohn’s disbarment hearing in the ‘80s (they got him), but eventually dropped him as his lawyer on discovering Cohn was dying of AIDS. People are dispensable.

More history. In 1972, Sen. Edmund Muskie, one of the most-decent people to ever run for president, had the misfortune to weep during a speech in snowy New Hampshire in which he was defending himself and his wife from accusations from William Loeb, conservative publisher of the Manchester Union Leader. An editorial accused Muskie, a Democrat, of using an ethnic slur against French-Americans, a large voting bloc in the state. The charge was based on a letter from a Florida man that was later shown to be a hoax planted by the dirty tricks division of the Nixon White House, another time when Republican shame took a holiday. Loeb also made a not-so-subtle suggestion that Muskie’s wife enjoyed drinking too much.

In defending her, Muskie spoke during a snowstorm, calling Loeb a “gutless coward.” But the senator’s voice broke and tears appeared to roll down his face. His aides later said it was snow because, apparently, decency in a presidential candidate was unacceptable. Voters agreed. Muskie eventually dropped out.

One more lesson on Republicans and shamelessness from history: Swiftboating.

The phrase was born during John Kerry’s run for the presidency in 2004. The Democratic senator from Pennsylvania was subjected to a relentless campaign in TV ads and even a book questioning his claimed military service and the circumstances of his combat medals.

A Navy veteran, he was commander of a swift boat, used to patrol the waters in Vietnam. A group calling itself Swift Vets and POWS for Truth attacked Kerry’s record as false and his medals as undeserved. The well-funded campaign dealt a serious blow to his campaign, leading to the re-election of George W. Bush. The Swift Vets claims were eventually determined to be unfounded, with virtually none of the veterans in the group having served on a boat that Kerry commanded.

“Red-baiting,” “dirty tricks, “swiftboating.” The terms live on today as examples of lying in politics and shameless disregard for the impact on people’s lives. All by Republicans in the pursuit or defense of power. It wasn’t always so with the party, but now it is. Trump, the proud ignoramus, gets a free ride from a shameless Republican Congress that has abandoned all pretense of decency. We’ve got ours, they smile.

Well, I for one am ashamed, America. At long last, I wish more of you were, too.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand … right place, right time?

Here comes Kirsten.

Thanks to Donald Trump’s thin skin and pathological need to attack any woman who speaks the truth to and about him, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s campaign for the presidency — mostly media speculation and staff downplaying until now — has been launched onto front pages, TV and social media sites ahead of schedule.

Not that Gillibrand is complaining. In fact, she thanked Trump in typical Gillibrand style — directly and defiantly. Just the way to get under his skin. And just the way to use his misogynistic history and instincts to put the spotlight on her signature issue —  sexual predation. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

The launch began when the Democratic senator from New York called on Trump to resign as president in light of allegations of sexual assault or harassment from, at last count, 17 women. Gillibrand had already called for the resignation of fellow Democratic senator, Al Franken, of Minnesota, because of sexual assault allegations and had said that, if BIll Clinton were president now and were facing the sexual misconduct charges that led to his impeachment, she would expect him to resign.

Those two moves set Gillibrand apart from the two wings of the Democratic Party — the progressives who love Franken and feel he was railroaded and deserves the hearing he requested, and the Clinton regulars who see any criticism of Bill as an attack on Hillary. Plus, some felt Gillibrand appeared to be ungrateful for the help she received from the Clintons when she replaced Hillary in the Senate. Members of both Democratic factions felt Gillibrand was exploiting a situation — the whirlwind of sexual assault allegations being made public about prominent men in various fields — to advance her political career.

In other words, she stood accused of being a politician.

Apparently. being ambitious is acceptable, even commendable, behavior for men in politics, but not (with the exception of Hillary) appropriate for women. This fits nicely with Gillibrand’s campaign to change prevailing societal attitudes and treatment of women.

And, critics notwithstanding, she didn’t come late to the party. Indeed, she came to the Senate already focused on sexual and gender abuse, turning her focus on the military as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. She was one of the leaders in the move to do away with the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that banned gays from serving openly in the military;

She has championed a bill, which has bipartisan support, to remove sexual assault cases from the military chain of command. The Military Justice Improvement Act is a byproduct of hearings in 2013 on sexual assault in the military, which she held as chair of a subcommittee on military personnel. Gillibrand has also been instrumental in drafting the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, which would hold colleges accountable for sexual assault on their campuses. And she is building bipartisan support for a measure to revamp congressional procedures for dealing with sexual harassment.

If ever there were a case of right place, right time, right person — right woman — this sure seems like it. Gillibrand may or may not have been planning to run for president — or maybe she was still assessing her chances — but the combination of: 1) the misogynist Trump in the White House; 2) the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal in Hollywood; 3) the ensuing accusations, revelations, admissions, firings and resignations of high-profile men in powerful positions in media, movies, business, politics; 4) the Women’s March movement; 5) the demonstration of women’s voting power in Democratic victories in Virginia and Alabama; and 6) the legions of Democratic women who want a champion of their gender but for various reasons felt Clinton wasn’t it, would seem to suggest a perfect alignment of the stars for a woman with excellent political instincts and without political baggage.

Senator Gillibrand.

A word about those instincts. Gillibrand was appointed senator in 2009 to replace Clinton, who was nominated to be secretary of state by President Barack Obama. Her selection by New York Gov. David Paterson was a surprise because Gillibrand was then a relatively unknown  congresswoman from upstate New York. That is, conservative upstate New York. She had managed to be elected in a Republican-heavy district in large part due to her ability to recognize what was important to her constituents (agriculture, guns) and to communicate directly to them. She says they trusted her even though she was a Democrat and two out of three voters were Republicans.

But she changed when she moved from the House to the Senate, going from representing a conservative congressional district to representing a liberal state. Critics say it was cynical and political, aimed at getting re-elected. She says as she traveled the state she learned different views about issues that were important to people — on gun control and gay rights for example — and her views changed as she learned more.

Take your pick on the Gillibrand evolution. The proof is in the pudding. She has been vocal and persistent in the Senate in championing whatever cause she latches on to, including single-payer health care and family leave, which have been longtime issues for her.

Still, it is #metoo and the rapid recognition of millions of women of the political power that is theirs, waiting to be harnessed, not exploited, that has placed Gillibrand — perhaps moreso than another favorite Trump target, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren — at what may be a pivotal place in history. Four male Democratic senators called on Trump to resign before she did, with nary a tweet from Trump. Gillibrand’s statement got to him.

He tweeted: “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Charles E. Schumer and someone who would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!”

Typical Trump, attacking a woman standing up to him by insulting her and using sexual innuendo. Also typically Trump, with bad timing. The tweet appeared hours before the senator was to speak to a group of truckers. The dotard’s sexual history was obviously not on the agenda, but, of course, the press asked Gillibrand to respond to his tweet.

So she did, in typical fashion: “It was a sexist smear attempting to silence my voice. I will not be silent on this issue, neither will women who stood up to the president yesterday and neither will the millions of women who have been marching since the Women’s March to stand up against policies they do not agree with.”

You could almost hear the campaign cash registers ringing.

rjgaydos@gmail.com