By Bob Gaydos

A deadly flash flood killed more than 100 people in Texas.

I’m so angry. Angry that the daily insanity of life with Trump makes it difficult to be sad. Just sad. Not frustrated and sad. Not bewildered and sad. Not dumbfounded and sad. Not furious and sad. Just sad.

The overlapping and competing of emotions is a byproduct of having to wake up each day in a “what the hell did he do or say now?” world. Like most of you, I’ve come to expect that, although I hesitate to say I’m used to it.

But that doesn’t matter when I just want to feel the sadness and sorrow for the families of all those young girls who drowned when a raging Guadalupe River swamped their summer camp in Central Texas. My god, what a tragedy. Impossible to imagine.

But at the same time, I also have to deal with the fact that Elon Musk, richest and second weirdest man on the planet, says he wants to start a new political party in the United States, to put pressure on both Republican and Democrats to create his view of society, which could have the beneficial effect of frustrating Trump’s MAGA agenda simply because Musk has so much money and he apparently now hates Trump. And he knows how to rig elections. So, is this good or bad?

Plus, Musk is the one who said Trump’s name was all over the Epstein files, and he likely had a look at them when he was Dogeing. But now, Pam Bondi, a thoroughly horrid human being, says those Epstein files she said she had on her desk to review, in effect, don’t exist. No client list, the attorney general says. And Jeffrey committed suicide. Case closed. And I am beyond angry at this load of BS and coverup for Epstein’s good friend, Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Texas is now more than 100 and they are still looking for more than 160 people, including 12-year-old girls missing from the church camp and you just know many won’t be found alive at this point and I am depressed thinking of them and area residents trapped in their homes.

As the story continued for days, Trump hadn’t said much about the deaths and, when asked if he would go to Texas, he said “maybe Friday.” But while the flood was still raging, he was putting on his greens and eating ice cream.

Yet he had previously had no trouble making a quick visit to fawn over the cruelly named Alligator Alcatraz in Florida. And I am angry again that this concentration camp for immigrants and whomever else ICE snatches off the streets actually sells souvenir merchandise and that it was thrown up in a couple of days in an area crawling with alligators and prone to flooding and that it is all pipes and canvas and wire and could be blown over in a heartbeat as hurricane season comes to Florida.

Which, of course, Trump didn‘t consider or care about when he decimated the workforce of the National Weather Service, which may have contributed to the lack of advance warning in Texas, for which Trump will accept no blame, as usual. Nor will he show any human empathy for the victims and their families. Incapable.

Meanwhile, rescue help pours into Texas, including from Mexico, and money for the rescue and the victims — millions — is pledged by just regular citizens, Trump still hasn’t shown his face or said that he’ll make sure the advance warning system the people of Kenn County asked the state of Texas to pay for but got only chump change will actually be built, even though he has effectively eliminated FEMA.

For me at least, the profound sadness this story deserves gets lost in anger over the lack of preparedness or concern for all affected and all the nonsense previously mentioned above as well as the insulting news that Bibi Netanyahu has written a letter nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for dropping a dozen bombs on Iran, blowing up a lot of rock and stuff, but likely no uranium and probably guaranteeing that country will now certainly develop a nuclear bomb. And that Bibi will now be Trump’s new best friend since he says he’s disappointed in Putin and, well, you know about Musk.

And yes, there will be, Trump has decreed, a mixed martial arts fight on the White House lawn next Fourth of July to properly celebrate this country’s 250th birthday. Seating for 20,000. No word on ticket prices yet.

I am beyond sad.

By Bob Gaydos

Crowds did not flock to Donald Trump’s birthday parade in Washington DC on June 14.

  When the “leader“ of the free world is a racist buffoon and you’ve been pretty much calling him that for about 10 years, it can sometimes be challenging to know where to go for the daily report. Same old, same old, you know? Anyway, for me, when in doubt, go to Jimmy Cannon.

   So …

— Maybe it’s just me, but: I don’t want to go to war with Iran because BiBi Netanyahu wants to outdo Trump in the strongman competition. Especially since Trump voided the deal with Iran that prohibited it from developing weapons grade uranium for nuclear weapons. Also, Trump needs to be reminded that only Congress can declare war so he needs to calm down about evacuating Tehran and dreaming of bunker-busting bombs.

— Maybe it’s just me, but: How do they let him out in public without a leash? In Canada for the G7 Meeting, Trump said they should never have kicked Russia out, that it was all Trudeau’s fault. Russia was kicked out in 2014 for seizing Crimea from Ukraine. Trudeau became Canadian prime minister in 2015, but why bother with details? Also, Trump got his alphabet all mixed up, thinking that the UK was part of the EU. Then he gave a speech that rambled on into immigration and other topics not on the G7 agenda until cut off by the host and, having a short attention span, left the conference after one day, saying he was looking for some kind of surrender from Iran or a peace agreement or a cease-fire or something. Plus Zelensky was showing up the next day. Embarrassing.

— Maybe it’s just me, but: when an elected state official and her husband are shot and killed in their home and another elected official and his wife, in the same state and of the same political party, are shot and seriously wounded and the gunman has a hit list of political targets, all of the same political party (Democrats), when the president, a member of the other political party, is asked whether he plans to call the governor of that state (Minnesota), you know, to maybe express sympathy, promise aggressive legal action and decry politically motivated violence of any kind against any party, even though the governor actually ran as the vice presidential candidate on the ticket opposing said president, I do not expect the president to say he “may” call the governor (Tim Walz), then add, “but he’s a terrible governor.” I really do not expect that, but then, see “racist buffoon” reference above.

— Maybe it’s just me, but: I’m old school enough to think that when a United States senator (Alex Padilla) is roughed up by federal agents, thrown to the ground and handcuffed just because he tried to ask a question of a cabinet official at a public meeting, the president, when asked about it, expresses concern and maybe even dismay and promises to look into the incident immediately. I don’t expect said president to say, “He’s new. He looks illegal.”

— Maybe it’s just me, but: How about that parade, huh? Creaky old tanks, no dress uniforms, antiwar protest songs, commercial sponsors, nobody watching except for a few people paid to be there and soldiers marching clearly out of step. Do you know how hard it is, when you are drilled from day one in the army to march uniformly in step (Hut, two, three, four! Your left, boom, your left, boom.) to purposely “march” out of step? Yet the troops chosen for the Trump birthday parade on Flag Day managed to do just that. They should get a medal. If he hadn’t nodded off he might’ve noticed. Of course he did find time to sign some souvenir flags, breaking protocol and the law in the process because he has to put his brand on everything. Pete Hegseth looked like he was dying for a drink. Marco Rubio just looked like he was dying. Ivanka didn’t bother to show up for daddy‘s birthday. The rest of America, millions of people, held their own parties in towns, villages and cities to let him know what they thought of him and his crew. Not much.

— Maybe it’s just me, but: When the news is all-Trump all the time, there’s a real temptation to ignore professional training and just go ahead and bury the lead. 

By Bob Gaydos

    Reporting the most significant news of the day is always a combination of judgment and opinion, seasoned by experience. But, within the variables, one thing is certain: War trumps  everything.

      The terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel was so brutally vicious, claiming the lives of more than a thousand innocent civilians, including women and children, the elderly, people dragged out of their homes, young people at a festival, even babies and also resulting in the taking of hostages that it (1.) overshadowed the unprecedented shutting down of the House of Representatives because Republicans, the majority party, had removed their chosen Speaker and could not agree on a new one, putting in peril (2) funding for the government itself, (3) aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia and (4) aid to longtime ally Israel in its declared war against Hamas, which (5.) did not seem to trouble the small group of rightwing radical Republicans holding the government hostage, or their anointed leader, Donald Trump, who (6.) gave his blessing for new Speaker to Jim Jordan, the ineffectual Ohio congressman who aided and abetted Trump in the failed January 6 insurrection and whose only goal seems to be to shut down the government and, in the process, all the investigations and court proceedings against Trump, who (7.) took the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel as an occasion to compliment Hezbollah, another Islamic terrorist group with a target on Israel and (8.) to blame Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for the success of the surprise attack, most likely as payback for the fact that Netanyahu (9.) was the first foreign leader to congratulate Joe Biden on his election as America’s president in 2020, something which Trump, Jordan and the rest of the MAGA crowd are still  (10.) trying to undo even as (11.) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a member of one of America’s most celebrated political families, flip-flopped between conspiracy theories and strategies in his own ego-driven campaign for the 2024 presidential election, having (12.) announced that he is dropping his plan to run as a Democrat to run instead as an independent candidate, probably because he was gaining little traction among Democratic voters since his extreme views more closely resemble those of Trump supporters, (13.) a development which caused confusion among political prognosticators as to whether Kennedy as an independent candidate with a famous Democratic name  would take more voters from Trump or Biden, (14.) something which would be more of a worry for Democrats if RFK Jr. even vaguely resembled his late father politically and personally (he’s no Bobby Kennedy) and had also not recently been accused of anti-Semitism, but, again, was complicated by (15.) Kennedy’s unambiguous reaction to the Hamas attack on Israel: “This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now.”

    War trumps everything.

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