By Bob Gaydos

Tommy DeVito in action.

  Timing, they say, is everything. Whoever “they” are, I tend to agree with them. And I’m also the first to admit that my timing on this column is terrible, from a journalistic viewpoint.

   But I don’t write to a deadline anymore and, well, a story is still a story, especially in these days of no more local newspapers.

    So, two stories that got my attention a while back involved a couple of guys who you could say are living, breathing examples of a certain type often referred to as stereotypical inhabitants of the North Jersey/New York City axis: Tommy DeVito and Rudy Giuliani.

     DeVito, for those who don’t follow sports, is a quarterback in the National Football League. That statement alone is testament to the fact that, when it comes to timing, DeVito’s has turned out to be almost mystical.

        DeVito is the starting quarterback for the New York Giants because the quarterback who started the season as number one suffered a serious injury and was replaced by the backup quarterback, who also was seriously injured. The team was also not playing well.

          Some might say right place, right time and, yes, that’s true, but DeVito, a 23-year-old graduate of  North Jersey’s famed Don Bosco High, had to put himself in that position.

           His football career at Syracuse and Illinois was unremarkable and he was not drafted as a quarterback by any NFL team. Time to look for a career that doesn’t require good downfield vision and a willingness to be slammed to the ground by 260-pound linemen?

          No, DeVito asked the Giants for a tryout and someone liked what he saw and DeVito got a walk-on spot as the team’s third (only in emergencies!) quarterback.

           Badaboom, badabing, and there’s the North Jersey kid who still lives with his parents playing quarterback as the moribund Giants suddenly win three straight games and lift all of North Jersey and much of New York City out of the football doldrums.

         Turns out the kid’s got guts, can take lots of hits and can throw the ball. And he’s got a confident attitude as demonstrated by an Italian hand gesture he made famous after his first three wins. Kind of an in-your-face don’t mess with us message folks from the area would recognize and the rest of the U.S. was introduced to via TV. 

  I mentioned first three wins because, as you may know, the honeymoon ended last weekend at the hands of the Saints, who tossed Devito’s hand gesture back at him.

     No bigee. He’s still the Giants starting quarterback, his teammates support him, he has an agent out of central casting for “Goodfellas,” a cousin named Danny DeVito (not that one) who throws a mean tailgate party and, yes, good timing.

    A story broke recently that his agent raised DeVito’s appearance fee to $20,000 from $10,000, because of his client’s sudden celebrity, and a pizza restaurant canceled the gig, saying they couldn’t afford it. DeVito didn’t miss a beat. He showed up free of charge, probably ordered a chicken parm and undoubtedly said the Giants will take care of the Eagles in their next game. The coach says he’s still the starting quarterback, for now.

     And Rudy? Last I heard, a jury in Atlanta had ordered him to pay two poll workers $148 million for defaming them as part of the Trump team’s efforts to steal the  2020 election.

       Giuliani also, of course, is charged with Trump and others of various crimes in trying to change the election results in Georgia. In fact, he is guilty of lying about the election across the country as Trump’s mouthpiece.

       I wondered if he had the money to pay the two poll workers, but then it turns out he filed for bankruptcy right after the verdict. Maybe he had the presence of mind to recognize that “billionaire” Trump wouldn’t care a whit about Giuliani’s problems when the ex-president has got more than enough of his own.

        How did “America’s Mayor” get here? Bad timing. After 9/11, when he was the dominant political figure in the country, a mayor leading a bloodied and angry New York City out of the rubble of the terrorist attack with courage and pride, he could have run for president and won.

   He did run, in 2008, but not with any sense of purpose and urgency or platform. He skipped the traditional GOP Iowa and New Hampshire primaries and got buried in Florida. Bad timing. He dropped out. He never acted like it was his place and time, which it might well have been. Then he disappeared until he went to work as Trump’s mouthpiece because, well, the allure of power was always there.

    Time, a fondness for power, many bad decisions and, reportedly, a problem with alcohol and Giuliani’s now, at 79, facing bankruptcy and prison. His time has run out.

     Meanwhile, Tommy DeVito hired a new agent to handle his public appearances. Good timing.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

     With the rapid fire guilty pleas of three lawyers in a courtroom in Georgia, a lot of legal experts are saying the handwriting is on the wall for the same outcome for the lawyers’ client, Donald J. Trump.

       A tearful Jenna Ellis joined the no-nonsense Sidney Powell and the puzzling Kenneth Chesebro in cutting a deal with Fulton County DA Fani Willis, pleading guilty to avoid prison time for participating in Trump’s fraudulent attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

      Ellis, the youngest of the trio and the one who seemed to enjoy the media limelight the most, said she trusted the older, more experienced lawyers on Trump’s team, that she thought what they were saying was true.

    “What I did not do but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true,” the 38-year-old Ellis said.

       That may be just another lie by Ellis, but at this point it doesn’t matter. All three admitted to making false claims, accepted responsibility for their parts and agreed to testify as witnesses for the prosecution in the case against Trump.

   Basically, they admitted to participating in a criminal enterprise to change the results of the election in Georgia to favor Trump. That means the handwriting might well be on the wall for Rudy Giuliani, too, since he was Trump’s point man in Georgia.

     Synchronistically, Georgia is one of some 25 states that still require some classroom training in cursive handwriting in public schools. I say synchronistically, because at the same time history may have been metaphorically scribbled on the walls of a Georgia courthouse, on the opposite coast, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was literally signing a law reinstating education in cursive writing as a requirement in California public elementary schools, in grades one through six. 

      The author of the bill says it is intended to help students to be able to read and write in cursive so that they can read historical documents, including documents written by members of their own family.

      Others who opposed the removal of cursive as a requirement for public school curriculum in the U.S. in 2010 say many studies have shown that learning cursive not only improves retention and comprehension, it engages the brain on a deep level, that it helps youngsters to learn.

     Full disclosure. A little more than 10 years ago I wrote a column proclaiming that three things were obsolete. No longer needed. They were: Pennies, cursive writing and the Republican Party.

      Well, I still have pennies in my pocket and I can’t seem to do much about what the federal government mints. Although I have evolved from cursive to typewriters to computers to dictating this column on my cell phone, I still write quite a few checks by hand. I feel right and secure in doing so.

    I’ve been known to still sign an occasional card. And the educators and historians advise us not to lose this tool. So, I admit, I may have been a bit hasty 10 years ago in bad-mouthing cursive writing. I was wrong.

   But on the third item, I was dead on. Here’s what I wrote 10 years ago: “The Republican Party: Talk about obsolete. The 21st century version of the Party of Lincoln has been hijacked by haters, nay-sayers, evangelists, wealthy bullies and Flat Earthers. Anything, anyone, any idea that does not fit their narrow view of life is automatically a threat and subject to loud assault, not debate. It has no interest in working with others to better life for all Americans. It has no interest, in fact, in working with anyone who disagrees with its views. …

      “The best thing would be for the Republicans with a brain, a heart and a sense of obligation to actual governing (I know they’re out there) to form a new party. Leave Karl Rove, Roger Ailes, the Koch brothers and the Tea Partiers the ruins of the day. We don’t need them anymore.”

    The latest GOP fiasco in picking a Speaker of the House of Representatives is simply more evidence. Whether it was written in tea leaves or cursive, the message was there. The Republican Party was well on the road to becoming the catastrophe it is under Donald Trump today.

    That’s my two cents.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

The Marion County Record … still publishing

     There has been plenty of news coverage of the daily stream of complaints from the twice-impeached, four times indicted former president that (1.) accusing him of crimes (91 of them) for things he has said and trying to silence him from talking about the accusations constitute an attack on his First Amendment right of free speech, but (2.) the most recent legitimate threat to the First Amendment has received much less attention, possibly because it happened in Marion, Kansas, where the entire sheriff’s force raided the offices of the local paper, the Marion County Record, and the home of its owners, taking computers, phones, notebooks, etc., looking for the source of information on embarrassing news about a local politician and a business owner, even though the paper had not published articles on either person and despite a warrant that the local DA invalidated two days after the raid as unwarranted, leading (3.) news media organizations to denounce the rare government interference in the operation of a free press, an action which the editor said (4.) created stress which contributed to the death of his 98-year-old mother and newspaper co-owner a day after the raid, which is tragic, as is each of (5.) the estimated 49,500 people who committed suicide in the United States last year, the highest number ever, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control, which said suicides had become more commmon in America than any period since just before World War II, a war whose outcome established the former Soviet Union as a world power, to fear and grudgingly respect, both of which were absent as (6.) Ukraine continued its counteroffensive in the disastrous war launched against it by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which revealed the weakness of Russia’s military, and (7.) Russia’s robotic Luna-25 spacecraft crashed on the surface of the moon, much as (8.) Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax fraud and gun charges did when a judge

Hunter Biden

refused to accept the terms and (9.) Britain’s hopes of magically winning a World Cup in women’s soccer did when gritty Spain won the title match, one-nothing, which (10.) experts said was pretty much what Hawaii had done to prepare for the disastrous wildfire that devastated Maui, leveling a town and killing more than a hundred people, the kind of devastation Democrats could experience in 2024 if (11.) the deceptively named No Labels Party runs a candidate for president, since the moderate-conservative group wouldn’t take away any of Trump’s loyal followers (assuming he’s not in prison), but could sway some independents away from voting for Joe Biden, who (12.) practiced statesmanship by hosting the leaders of Japan and South Korea, traditional rivals if not enemies, at Camp David, to forge an alliance in the three countries’ favor, kind of the opposite approach of Trump, who (13.) said he would skip the scheduled Republican presidential candidates debate in favor of an interview with Tucker Carlson somewhere Trump can presumably demonstrate his right to free speech ad nauseum without fear of someone confronting him with facts, kind of like (14.) Rudy Giuliani‘s approach claiming that the RICO law, which he is charged with violating in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, does not apply to conspiracies among political  figures, even though, as the first U.S. prosecutor to use the law, Giuliani, who (15.) has experienced an epic fall from 9/11 grace, (16.) once bragged how he used it against Mayor Ed Koch and other New York City political figures. 

     Ain’t karma great?

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Dinner with Trump? No words.

   It was a good question. An excellent question, actually: “What would you say to him if you did have dinner with him?”

     The “him” in this case would be Donald Trump. The notion of having dinner with him was the subject of a recent column I wrote regarding an email (actually several) from Trump inviting me to enter a lottery for a chance to have dinner with him. One lucky person will win! Just donate!

     Ultimately, I didn’t donate and then killed all the emails and wrote a column about what a unique experience it would be to have dinner with a former president, especially this recently indicted and convicted and still under investigation former president. But then, what would I, a mere retired journalist, possibly say to Trump, I asked jokingly, “Pass the ketchup?”

      The moderator of a Facebook site to which I belong and where I had posted the column (The Thom Hartmann Bloggers Group) approved the post and then called me on it in the comments section. “What would you say?”

       I hate when they do that. Make you get all serious about stuff. But, I thought, it’s a legit question. So I’ve given it some thought.

        Knowing what a narcissist Trump is, there’s always the basic question to ask a prominent person: Who was the biggest influence on your life?

        But I probably wouldn’t want to hear about his racist, slumlord father or his old friend and thug-of-a-lawyer Roy Cohn. Not dinner talk.

        Family? “How’s Baron? When’s the last time you saw him? Does he play any sports? How do you feel about Ivanka losing interest in politics? Wasn’t that something how the woman in the changing room at Bergdorf Goodman looked so much like your second wife, Marla, in that photograph?”

       Scratch family.

       Sports? “How come that hotshot football player, Herschel Walker, whom you signed to play for the New Jersey Generals in the doomed-to-fail USFL when they wouldn’t let you have a team in the NFL, lost, despite your support, when he ran for the Senate in Georgia?”

    No.

    I finally decided the only question I really wanted to ask Trump was, “What did Putin say when it was just the two of you in that room together with no one taking notes and you came out looking like someone who had just been blackmailed over incriminating photos and he was smiling like he had just swallowed the canary?”

     I also figured he’d never answer.

     Umm, “How do you live with yourself?”

     He wouldn’t understand.

     Ultimately, I decided there could be no dinner talk with Donald Trump because from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t have conversations. He talks at you. He makes pronouncements. He tosses out gratuitous insults. He comments on how much he knows about so many things. He makes stuff up. He doesn’t understand a lot of stuff. He has no sense of humor. For some reason, he likes to show off old maps he found lying around the White House. If you’re an attractive, young female, he’ll put his hand on your thigh and slide it as far as possible because he can because, as he’s said, he’s a celebrity.

     And then there’s this: He has, by extension, called me, an ink-stained wretch of a newspaperman, “the enemy of the people.”

      “Pass the ketchup,” it is.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

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

By Bob Gaydos

The invitation

     Sometimes, it’s the mundane, easy to overlook things that give a week it’s meaning.

      For example, I recently bought two medium coffees at a drive-through window for a popular coffee chain. After the male voice inside the screen repeated the order back to us, he said, “That will be 6 oh 3, please drive around.”

      We looked at each other in surprise. $6.03? As I scrambled for three pennies to go with the 10-dollar bill, I thought it seemed like just a short while ago that same order was under $4. More recently, a bit more than $5. My friend, a regular customer of the franchise, agreed.

       Inflation? Supply chain issues with Latin America? I think a bit of profit-taking is the more likely explanation. By the way, the coffee chain in question was not Starbucks.

        Not long after this encounter with corporate America, I had occasion to stop by another local establishment for some suet and birdseed. It’s been a good year for cardinals, blue jays, finches, doves, sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, starlings, woodpeckers, wrens, squirrels and other hungry feeders.  As I approached the front door, a small sign, recently posted, caught my attention: “Lawful concealed carry permitted on these premises.”

Again, I paused. Hmm. Good to know, I thought, should I ever feel threatened wandering around the bird seed and chicken feed. Although I must admit, I am puzzled at the sudden need for this notice in the first place.

     Back home, while routinely scrolling through my daily emails, I was surprised to find a message that was the highlight of the week: An invitation to dinner with a former president of the United States of America. Wow, I thought, that doesn’t happen a lot. In fact, it’s never happened to me.

    Then I read a little further. It seems I was being invited to take a chance on being invited to dinner with a former president of the United States of America. All I had to do was donate some money to be placed on the list from which one “lucky“ winner, and a guest, would be chosen to have dinner with, of course, Donald Trump, at one of his golf courses.

    That’s not all. The invitation also said, “That’s right – I’lI cover your flight, your accommodations, and your terrific dinner.

And we’ll take a picture together so that you can keep a photograph of this incredible memory forever.”

     Donate now!

     How could I refuse this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? This was a chance to rub elbows, shake hands, drink coffee and have a photo taken with a man just convicted by a jury of sexually abusing a woman nearly 30 years ago in a dressing room of a Fifth Avenue Manhattan department store and publicly calling her a liar and saying all sorts of vile things about her when she accused him of rape, a man that jury said owed the woman $5 million for the harm he caused to her reputation.

      A man, coincidentally, also recently indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for campaign finance fraud in a case involving paying hush money to a porn star he cheated with shortly after his third wife, Melania, had given birth to their son, Baron.

       In fact, this was a man also facing possible indictment in Georgia for trying to convince officials to change the results of that state’s vote in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost.

       And, come to think of it, this was a man under investigation for taking hundreds of classified government documents with him when he left office and refusing to return them until the FBI served him with a warrant. Sonofagun if he didn’t even brag about taking those documents on TV the day after the Manhattan jury found him guilty of sexual abuse. Why, he even took that opportunity to insult his victim again.

      Yes, that ex-president. The same one who refused to do anything to stop the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when the results of the 2020 election were being certified. The one who placed his own vice president’s life in jeopardy with remarks he made on that day, never mind the lives of all members of Congress, police and those working in the Capitol.

     This was the former president who, for good measure, on that same misbegotten TV presentation, would not say who he wanted to win the war between Russia and Ukraine. Coincidentally, while he was president, he said he admired Russian President Vladimir Putin and was impeached (for the second time) for threatening to withhold U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless their president came up with some dirt on Joe Biden’s family. Biden, of course, was his opponent in the presidential election in 2020, an election Biden won.

      Well, that very busy ex-president was now offering me the opportunity to have dinner with him. All I had to do was kick in a few bucks for a chance at winning the raffle. I mean, they didn’t say why this supposed billionaire needed the money, although he did say he’s running for president again. So …

      Donate now! Time is running out. I got the same urgent message about three or four days in a row. I guess they wanted to make sure that every loyal American — even registered independent voters — had an opportunity to win this once-in-a-lifetime event.

   I hesitated. I mean, it was quite an opportunity, after all. A chance to maybe speak to a former president of the United States of America. But then I thought, what would I, a mere retired journalist of 40-plus years’ experience, have to say at dinner to this man? Pass the ketchup?

     I decided not to send in a donation and, the cost of coffee being what it is, ordered sushi for dinner. I deleted the email. A new invitation came the next day, but I figured we’d be needing birdseed again soon.

rjgaydos@gmail.com   

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

By Bob Gaydos

     “Would you be upset if any of these states left the Union?”

      That provocative question, accompanied by a map of the United States with the entire South, from South Carolina to Florida to Texas, all in one color, showed up on my Facebook feed about a week ago.

       It was easy enough to answer. “No, “I said, “and they should add Kentucky.”

       That was the glib. quick answer Facebook likes. But the question also reminded me of a column I had written about a decade ago. The headline was, “10 states where my sons should not live, ever”.

       Now, ever is a long, long time, but it’s amazing just how well that list has held up.

         The column was inspired by a conversation I  had with a former newspaper colleague about a congressman from Florida who claimed there were 80 Democratic members of Congress who were Communists. I had written an editorial about the guy. My friend and I agreed he was a moron. He was also a Republican.

      Then I thought about all those states other than Florida that were also represented and governed by officials who make similarly idiotic statements all the time and was grateful I didn’t live in any of those states. So I wrote a column warning my sons off. So far, they’ve paid attention.

     That original list included Texas, Arizona, Alaska, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Tennessee and, yes, Kentucky (at least I’m consistent).

      I added a watchlist that included Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana. Only Georgia appears to be escaping my newly expanded list of states to avoid, but it’s still on the watch list. Missouri now also makes the big list.

          The primary criteria for making the original list were: Rampant racism, anti-intellectualism, bigotry, intolerance, religious fanaticism, and electing morons to office over and over again. The  criteria still apply, but I would add to them fanatical Trumpism, anti-Vaccism, a refusal to wear masks to avoid spreading Covid, and the casual acceptance of violence as a solution to political grievances.

       One more thing. Voters in the states consistently elect officials who vote against their own constituents’ welfare and who view politics as a war to be won at all costs rather than an exercise in democratic compromise for the greater good. I guess that’s Trumpism after all. (I guess I also now will be labeled “elitist“ in all these states.)

       The solution? The ideal one would be electing officials who value education and inclusion. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening anytime soon in many of these states. There are simply not enough local Republican politicians willing to buck the fear factor in opposing Trump. So for now at least, it means electing as many Democrats as possible in state elections. Georgia may be leading the way in this. Eliminating the Electoral College in choosing the presidents would also help.

    But in the meantime, sons and like-minded readers, avoid all states mentioned in this column.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

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