By Bob Gaydos

The lucky Ladybug.

  Last Saturday turned out to be quite a day. I woke up to a much-needed warm, sunny day with snow melting everywhere, and wound up spending my afternoon writing about the dotard in the White House starting a war with Iran because people were talking about stuff in the Epstein files about him raping a 13-year-old girl.

   Bummer, right?

   But the universe has a way of trying to balance things out, I believe. You just have to pay attention.

    Later Saturday, I got together with a group of friends over coffee and good cheer to talk about anything other than war. In the midst of this fellowship, a ladybug suddenly appeared on the table right next to my arm. Out of nowhere. Inside, windows closed, no plants, ladybug.

     It stuck around. Pleasantly surprised, I said I was “pretty sure” it was a good omen. In my head, I was saying, “God, I sure hope it is“

     Well, hey, sometimes I get it right. Back home on the couch, I asked my assistant – Google AI – to check out the symbolism of the ladybug. It reported back, “Ladybugs are almost universally recognized as the symbols of good luck, protection and positive transformation. Their arrival is often seen as a sign that wishes are about to come true or that a period of prosperity is beginning.”

     Also, in some cultures they are seen as guardians that ward off negative energy, in others they represent personal growth and in many traditions, AI tells me, “the appearance of a ladybug suggests that true love is on its way or that current relationships will flourish.”

   Gotta love that last flourish. And I wouldn’t argue with that period of prosperity thing either. But I’d really like to cash in on that “wishes are about to come true” sign. For all of us.

   Realistically, I don’t think even a swarm of ladybugs could give the tin man in the White House a heart, but I gotta believe in enough of a swarm, perhaps accompanied by massive demonstrations and thousands of phone calls complaining about starting illegal wars and allegedly raping 13-year-old girls not being acceptable behavior by the titular head of this country, miraculously implanting a brain and some guts in cowardly Republican members of Congress to put a stop to the insanity. That’s my wish.

   They say you gotta believe. They also say you gotta grab a shovel or a hammer or a phone or a pen or whatever is necessary to kind of help out. C’mon, folks. I’d really hate to waste a good lady bug.

By Bob Gaydos

Photo published in The Guardian of an image taken from a Iranian state television showing what it says is the site of US and Israeli missile strikes that hit a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran. At least 80 children were reportedly killed.

    It’s 55° and sunny in my little corner of the world on the last day of February, the snow is melting, the guys on the other side of the creek have started their target practice, scaring the dogs and the SOB in the White House, along with his friend in Israel, has started a war with Iran because everybody in this country is talking about how the FBI is covering up stuff in the Epstein files about said SOB raping a 13-year-old girl on Epstein’s island. Ah, Saturday.

    Look, this is simple. The Constitution prohibits the president from unilaterally declaring war on any other country. Congress has actually passed a War Powers Act. Other presidents have ignored it. Doesn’t make it right. Picking on the baddest actor in the Middle East doesn’t make it right. Claiming it’s necessary because Iran is developing weapons is pure hypocrisy when the SOB in the White House, in his first term, withdrew from an agreement President Obama had made with Iran that forbade them from developing nuclear weapons. That meant inspections and verification. Trump dumped it. Then, back in the Oval Office last year, he bombed the crap out of Iran and said their ability to develop nuclear weapons was obliterated. And, not so by the way, he campaigned as the peace president who would not get involved in regime change in other countries and would not get the United States involved in protracted war anywhere, but especially the Middle East.

    So, maybe he got tired of killing unarmed Venezuelan fishermen or killing law-abiding American citizens in Minnesota or was really angry that the Supreme Court told him he couldn’t unilaterally impose tariffs on other countries. Or maybe he owed Bebe Netanyahu a favor.

   Or, maybe he noticed that everyone in this country was talking about the FBI covering up stuff from the Epstein files about him raping a 13-year-old girl on Epstein‘s island. That news wasn’t going to help with the midterm elections if all the cowardly Republicans in Congress got voted out of office. Only a couple of them seemed to notice that he didn’t get the OK from Congress to attack another country. Apparently constitutional law is only for Democrats to worry about now. 

    It’s Saturday in America and it’s 55° and sunny in my little corner of the world on the last day of February and maybe some of the mainstream media, as they are now referred to, will notice that the SOB in the White House can’t stay awake at meetings, can barely put two sentences together that make sense, lies with every breath, reportedly just bombed a girls elementary school in Iran and is an adjudicated sex offender whose name appears thousands of times in the Epstein files, including accusations of raping a 13-year-old girl, which the FBI, under his control, is trying to cover up.

    At least the guys on the other side of the creek stopped shooting and let the dogs get back to their nap. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.

By Bob Gaydos

Democrats’ shopping list for coming elections. Unsolicited.

    Back two or three lifetimes ago, being between newspaper jobs and hobbling around downtown Annapolis on crutches as the result of a touch football accident, I spent some time answering phones and making phone calls for the Democratic Party. It was primary season and someone whose name I can’t recall thought it would be a good way to spend some time and use my journalist’s familiarity with politics. Drinking may have been involved.

     It was 1976. Joe Tydings, scion of a prominent Maryland family, was trying to get back to the Senate and Governor Moonbeam — Jerry Brown of California — was running for president. Or dating Linda Ronstadt. Or both.

   Tydings lost the primary to Rep. Paul Sarbanes, who went on to serve five terms. Brown carried Maryland, but lost nationally to a peanut farmer from Georgia. That farmer, Jimmy Carter, then beat the accidental president, Gerald Ford, in the general election, but later ran into Ronald Reagan and the Iran hostages crisis, serving only one term.

    I reminisce about this history and these less than happy days in reaction to a mailing from the Democratic National Committee (one of many I have received) asking me, as a Democrat, to fill out a survey to help them prepare an agenda to fight Donald Trump and the Republicans. 

   While it’s good to know that someone is thinking about these things, let me be clear: I am not now and have never been a member of the Democratic, or for that matter, Republican, Socialist, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or Communist Party. Being registered in a political party doesn’t mesh with writing about politics for newspapers. My time answering phones in Annapolis may have filled a void, but I never joined the party.

    So DNC, I won’t be returning the survey or making any donation. I get it that it takes a lot of money to run political campaigns, but I will limit my contribution to giving (since you asked) my two cents on what Democrats should do to rid this country of Trump and the brain dead Republican Party.

    In essence, all of the above on your survey. That is, virtually everything suggested makes sense to some extent. Except for one.

    Under ranking of priorities, one item states: “Persuading voters who did not vote for Democrats in 2022 and 2024.”

     Save your breath, folks. These people knew Trump-the-terrible from the first time, enjoyed the rewards of Joe Biden’s economic agenda and still didn’t vote for Democrats. Ten years and counting of Trump Republicanism.

   If they were alive and breathing in 2022 and 2024 and voted for the party of anything Trump says is Ok, they are either too dumb to figure it out or they agree with the feed-the-rich, starve the non-white, non-Christian agenda of the Republican Party.

    Look, there are MAGA Trumpers who don’t even care that their leader raped young girls with Jeffrey Epstein, stole money from a phony kids cancer charity, sexually asssulted a woman in a clothing store dressing room on Fifth Avenue, promised a wall to stop the flow of immigrants from Mexico but delivered roaming bands of violent, masked kidnappers instead, and pardoned all those who followed his direction and laid waste to the U.S. Capitol when he told them the 2020 election was stolen from him.

    I could go on, but you get the idea. If they didn’t see or care about the difference between Democrats and Republicans two years ago, they likely still feel the same today or they are too embarrassed to admit they were wrong. Too iffy.

    Better to “engage,” as you say, those who didn’t bother to vote in 2022 and 2024. The ones who say all politicians are the same, so they don’t pay attention to politics. Or vote. They may be sorry they ignored their privilege and their duty.

    If the cost of groceries today, disappearance of jobs, violent ICE raids locally, illegal destruction of the East Wing of the White House and the total humiliation of the U.S. on the international stage with a president who “ends” dozens of wars except for the real one in Ukraine (“Day One”, remember?), rambles incoherently, insults longtime allies and falls asleep at meetings don’t persuade them that not all politicians are the same, nothing probably will. But it’s definitely worth a shot.

    So, yes, by all means work to win back the Congress this year and the presidency in 2028. Talk about the Epstein files every day. Go to court. And talk about Republicans’ shameful duplicity and cowardice with regard to Trump at every level of government. Every day.

    An unknown peanut farmer from Georgia beat the guy who inherited the Watergate mess from Richard Nixon in 1976. That mess pales by comparison with the grift Trump has been performing on Americans for a decade. Clean it up, please.

   As a lifetime independent voter, that’s what I think you Democrats should do.

By Bob Gaydos

A protestor in Minneapolis. AP photo

 Catching up after snowmageddon with a cautious sense of optimism that America has finally awakened to the moral rot festering at the core of its existence. The sad thing is it took the murder of two innocent American citizens in broad daylight on the streets of one of the nation’s leading cities by agents of the federal government — and the subsequent clumsy attempt by government officials to place blame for their deaths on the victims themselves — to arouse this awakening.   

   That to me is the real problem. The malaise, the laziness, the apathy, the entitlement, the irresponsibility, the selfishness, the fear, the lack of awareness and, bluntly, sometimes the utter stupidity on the part of millions of Americans that has allowed the likes of Donald Trump and his coterie of greedy, amoral, bigoted, lying vermin to turn this nation into a festering pool of anger and violence that keeps putting money in their bank accounts.

   Too harsh? It’s not for nothing that Trump once said, “I love the poorly educated.”

    The truth is, without the votes of millions of Americans who know and care nothing about how government works and were enthralled by the phony persona of a TV pitchman and the millions of non-votes by Americans who think that “all politicians are alike“ and don’t understand that the freedom and other benefits they enjoy by living in this country depends on their participation, Trump and his mob would not be in power. He’d probably be in prison.

    And Renee Good and Alex Pretti would likely be alive.

    The shooting deaths of the two Minneapolis residents by ICE agents were captured on video by bystanders. They showed clearly that neither one of the victims did anything to provoke or threaten the ICE goons. Yet the Trump administration immediately targeted both victims as terrorists and threats to their killers.

    This time, however, the lies backfired. Thanks to cell phones and social media, people, even the true Trump believers, could see for themselves what happened. Heck, even the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post could see it. Two American citizens were shot dead in the streets by federal agents who are poorly trained at best and were likely lured to apply for the job by a $50,000 signing bonus and the opportunity to wear all kinds of military gear, a mask and a badge and the freedom to shove and threaten, kidnap and beat people at will without regard to their safety, much less the law. Even a couple of Republican lawmakers noticed.

   So things are calmed down in Minneapolis for now, Democrats are threatening to cut off funding for ICE and a lot of Americans suddenly realized it wasn’t only “immigrants“ who should be wary of the government.

   But as Trump typically backpedals when his bluster and BS don’t work, what happens now? Will demonstrations against ICE continue around the country? Will Republican lawmakers be held accountable for allowing a clearly cognitively declining Trump to continue his assault on America? Will ICE be abolished? Will Kristi Noem be fired? 

     A few years back another Minneapolis resident, George Floyd, was killed by agents of the government – Minneapolis police. The Black Lives Matter movement came and went, but not before prompting a Blue Lives Matter reaction. Unlike the thousands of non-white, Spanish-speaking immigrants and those of other nationalities who are lawfully in this country or at least leading a productive, law-abiding life and have been kidnapped and locked up by ICE, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were white, non-immigrant, English-speaking American citizens. Americans are in revolt.

     Coincidence?

     We’ll find out soon enough if this is a true moment of moral clarity for America or just more of the same selective attitude towards that “All men are created equal” line we like to brag about.

     Honestly, sticking with my cautious optimism and acknowledging the law of unintended consequences, sometimes it takes the wrong motivation to realize the right outcome. In this case, I can live with that. It’s a lesson America would be much better off for learning. 

By Bob Gaydos

Marjorie Taylor Greene

I spent a surprisingly relaxing five minutes the other night listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene on YouTube. Yeah sure, I’ll repeat it. I spent a surprisingly relaxing five minutes the other night listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene on YouTube.

Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are. But it’s true.

The onetime MAGA maniac, who helped lead the Republican Party kicking and screaming (her, not the GOP regulars) into the cult of Trump, sat calmly and quietly, almost demurely, staring into the camera telling us about how she had been wrong to trust Trump and was disenchanted with politics because the people in it aren’t really there to serve the public. That is why she resigned from Congress, she said.

In and of itself, I wouldn’t buy that as her reason for quitting. She knew what the game was like and how to play as dirty as the next guy. But she was talking about the Epstein files and Trump and the victims whose stories of sexual assault she had heard in closed-door sessions and Trump’s reneging on his promise to release the files once elected and his continuing disregard of Congress’s official demand for release of the entire, unredacted files and about a phone call she said she got from Trump, because of her insistence on making the files public. She was talking about all that.

She said Trump called her office and said the files could not be released because people he knew would get hurt. Not that he would get hurt. People he knew. Read between the lines.

Greene said she put the call on speakerphone so her whole staff could hear it. She’s obviously serious about this and wants as many witnesses as possible.

I have no idea why, after all the Trump insanity, this is the issue that caused Greene to see the light, brought her a moment of clarity. I suspect, as with other Republican women in Congress who have pushed for release of the files, it’s highly personal.

Whatever the reason, and as delayed as this change of heart may be, I welcome it because she speaks to and for a lot of the MAGA crowd.

She may even have given some of her male colleagues in the Republican Party the courage to defy their leader on other issues. The House passed an extension to the Obamacare subsidies, despite Trump‘s opposition. The Senate finally declared Trump had no right to go to war against Venezuela or any other country without consulting Congress. Some Republicans called Trump‘s threats about taking Greenland reckless.

I don’t know if they’re all connected, but they are all deviations from the previous Republican norm regarding Trump — quiet obedience.

So I welcome Greene’s calm persistence in going after full release of the unredacted Epstein files as opposed to the Republican committee chair following Trump’s orders and focusing only on Democrats. And hey, if Bill Clinton’s in there, so be it.

I may be looking for something that’s not there. That’s the kind of world we live in today. But I had a surprisingly relaxing five minutes listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene the other night and I think that means something.

Stay tuned.

(This was written five years ago. The words still stand. A lesson sadly not yet learned.)

By Bob Gaydos   

The insurrection.

  I took a walk around the pond  Wednesday afternoon, January 6, a little before 4:30. It was cold, but still light out. The sun had just begun to set. As I walked I thought about how lucky — privileged — I was to be able to enjoy such a quiet moment in such a beautiful place in such a shithole country.

    No, friends and family, I haven’t moved. I still live in America, in a particularly scenic part of it, I think. For new readers, that place is upstate New York. It’s a place where a man can be alone to enjoy nature, if the man turns off his electronic devices.

     Two hours of watching live news reports out of Washington, D.C., had made me feel something I had never felt before — a combination of fear, anger, sadness, shame and profound outrage. The calming words and presence of President-elect Joe Biden had finally broken the spell the scenes of chaos had cast on me. It will end, I told myself. It will not succeed. There aren’t enough of them. They are all fury and delusion, taking selfies as they lay waste to the seat of government of the country they profess to love. Ignorance and arrogance, the Trump formula. In the end, it fails, but oh the harm it does. He doesn’t care. They, the rioters, are too dumb to know. That’s the nicest way I can put it. Or they are racists. Or both.

       Those are the facts. And for several hours on a Wednesday afternoon, as our Congress was attempting to perform its constitutional duty of confirming a new president,  these “Make America Great Again” terrorists made it look like one of those “shithole countries“ their leader once referred to with intent to insult. Yep, that’s what it looked like to me. …

                                                              ***.                                     

        … As I resume writing, it is now a week later. Trump has been impeached, again. Incitement to insurrection. Five people died in the attempted coup on The Capitol, including a police officer who was beaten to death by the rioters. White rterrorists carrying a Blue Lives Matter flag killed a Capitol police officer. They spread feces and urine throughout the building. They ransacked offices and went looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence. The whole time, the rioters took selfies of themselves. Eventually, they went home or some D.C. bar, apparently thinking that would be the end of it. Just a friendly little failed insurrection in the nation’s capital, broadcast live around the world.

           If you stop to think about it – and apparently the rioters did not — the ignorance is astounding. It is surpassed only by the hypocrisy of the Republican members of Congress who encouraged and invited the assault and who voted against seating Biden as the duly elected president, even after the insurrection had been quelled. They stuck to the lies of the election being stolen from Trump, even though every one of them – except for perhaps a couple of conspiracy lunatics — knows that that is a lie. It was Trump’s biggest and most dangerous lie. In truth, a treasonous lie.

         Since that now infamous Wednesday, much more has been revealed about the attack on the Capitol. It wasn’t as innocent as it first appeared. There was a plan. There may have been inside help from some Republican members of Congress. Maybe even from the Capitol police, who were woefully unprepared for a massive event that was announced well in advance. There was a delay in getting National Guard troops to the scene, perhaps caused by someone in the Defense Department.

          There will be investigations. May they go on for as long as necessary and bring to justice all those who we’re involved in this assault on America. Every last one of them. Homegrown terrorists. White supremacists. Members of Congress. Conspiracy nuts. Nazis. Klansmen. Racists. Pick a name. The list includes police and ex-military members as well. The attackers were virtually all white, which is why they are still alive. Lock them all up. People who bring swastikas and Confederate flags to attack the seat of the government of the United States of America deserve no mercy.

           Trump now stands accused by Congress and convicted by the majority of the American people and the rest of the world of inciting an attempted overthrow of a duly elected government. But his accomplices in the Republican Party are also guilty. They have ignored his assault on democratic principles for four years, out of fear or for their own gain or because they agreed with him. They deserve what they’re reaping. The party deserves to die. May it be reborn in some semblance of a responsible political party, perhaps including those Republicans who had the courage to speak out publicly and fight against Trumpism.

            America has been put on notice. There are those among us, appearing publicly as patriotic citizens, but operating out of hate and fear that their dream of a white, Christian nation with everyone else second-class citizens, is about to die. And in their foolhardy effort to avoid that fate, they may have actually hastened it. Republicans who remained silent, evangelicals who remained silent as Trump ravaged democracy, all stand indicted. Those who supported him financially along the way and now seek to distance themselves, all stand indicted. Rupert Murdoch and Fox News stand indicted. 

            In a country Trump would call a “shithole,” those seeking to overthrow the government usually try to get the military on their side if they hope to succeed. When they don’t, they don’t. As I watched with Lester Holt on NBC News as the idiots stormed the Capitol, I kept thinking, well, sooner or later troops with weapons and bullets will arrive. Hopefully, with orders to shoot. I also was dumbfounded that people were posting images of themselves on the Internet as they perpetrated this terrorist attack against this nation and gave no thought to the fact that this would make it easy to track them down and arrest them. Ignorance and arrogance.

              Yes, we have a lot of work to do, but the first thing is not to give into Republican pleas of coming together for the good of the country. They spent four years quietly watching Trump tearing the country apart. They must pay the price. I repeat, there are many more of us than them and what is necessary now is for all who know and love and respect what this nation is about to speak out forcefully in defense of it. Bring to justice those responsible. Convict Trump. Convict him again and again on whatever charges may be filed when he leaves office. Teach young people that actions have accountability. When we get around to it, teach young people about civics and government and history in school again. Clearly a lot of Americans slept through those classes. Evangelical Christians are on their own in this one.

           Joe Biden faces a monumental task when he becomes president on January 20, but he will have full control of the Congress to back him up and, I believe, fervent support of a vast majority of Americans as well. That white mob that assaulted the Capitol was an embarrassment to this nation, but maybe a lesson as well. American exceptionalism was put to the lie.

            No, this is not a “shithole” country, yet. I can still take a quiet walk around the pond every day. But those who would take the right to feel that safe and at home in this country away from anyone whose skin color or nationality or religion or politics they find fault with must know there can be no healing until the wounds are closed, Not until the guilty are prosecuted and those who aided and abetted admit their guilt. Not until journalists are not casually referred to as “enemies of the people.” Not until children are not put in cages. Not until all lives truly matter.                      

            Enough.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

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

By Bob Gaydos

     This is traditionally the time for resolutions, predictions or wishes for the new year. In the interest of time and uncluttering my mind, I’m going to attempt to do all three in one sitting.

      Number one resolution for me: Take care of myself. Do better at taking my vitamin supplements. Walk more regularly. Stay in touch with friends. Read more. Try not to sweat the small stuff.

      I wish and hope I can manage to do that basic minimum of self care because I know it will make life easier for me and those around me and — big and — it will make it much easier for me to enjoy it when my number one wish comes true.

      Namely, goodbye Trump. No, not a surprise. I’m not even going to express a preference for how the Donald exits the scene, whether because of failing health or constitutional disqualification. The sooner the better is the only qualifier. The nation, heck, the world needs a mental health break from the anger, deceit, bitterness and cruelty the man has left at every turn.

      I wish the millions of Americans who voted for him and still support him have their individual moments of clarity and surrender to the fact they have been duped. Admitting it is the first step to recovery.

     I wish the Republican Party would just go away. Disappear. Cowards all. At least those in Congress. Be done with disgracing the legacy of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower. Heck, I’ll even give them Reagan.

    I wish only the worst for the handpicked team of sycophants and worse who have done Trump’s bidding — Bondi, Hegseth, Kennedy, Patel, Rubio, Noem, et al. They deserve to pay the price for the pain they have aggressively inflicted.

    I wish, I wish, I wish. I wish that leaders of all religions in this country could join together in a moment of healing, that gambling can be removed from sports at the professional and college levels, that owners of newspapers and electronic media honor their First Amendment privilege and duty to report the news honestly and courageously, regardless of their bottom lines and that Americans insist on it, that Elon Musk be deported, that Democrats sweep the midterm elections, that younger Americans save themselves and the rest of us from the greedy insanity of MAGA. That last I wish most all.

   I predict … gingerly, that Trump will be removed from office, not just because of his obviously failing health and deteriorating mental condition, but because the people behind him, J.D. Vance et al, want it. Republicans see the failing poll numbers and the anger in the streets. They think they can save their Project 25 with a new face. But Vance is not the right face. The cult has one leader. The underlings are there to do his bidding. Also, they don’t have the protection Trump has to keep on riding roughshod over anyone and anything in his way — he doesn’t care about anyone else and he doesn’t care, much less know, how stupid he can sound.

    So, I predict the Democrats will indeed sweep the midterms and, with the help of disaffected Republicans (especially women), begin moving America back to being the land of the free. Make America sane again. I predict this will be very good for my well-being and allow me to go back to sweating (and writing about) the small stuff.

     I wish the same for you. Thanks for sticking with me. Happy New Year. 

By Bob Gaydos

Elise Stefanik … leaving politics

(more…)

By Bob Gaydos 

Rob Reiner
… he will be missed

    Why in the hell is he talking?

     Excuse me, texting. Same thing. Same nonsense. Same hate. Same self-serving glorification at the pain of others. Yeah, Trump.

     I’ve been writing a column on addiction and recovery for nearly two decades. It was a monthly feature of the local paper when the local paper used to have regular features. A major component of the column was information gleaned from people involved in 12-Step recovery programs.

     These programs are noted for, among other things, having acronyms for just about anything. FEAR. Face everything and recover. KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. SLIP. Sobriety losing its priority. They make it easier to remember the goal.

    There is one that was passed along to me by a couple of local members of Al-Anon, a group for those affected by someone else’s alcoholism, that I have found useful: WAIT. Why am I talking?

    Basically, it’s a message to oneself that no one needs to hear what you have to say at the moment and it is probably only going to make things worse. I think it goes by STFU on social media. The polite way to say it is, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Tough to acronym that.

    So, back to Trump. No, he never learned such lessons about empathy or decency or simple, appropriate behavior. Every occasion is an opportunity to either glorify himself or inflict pain on others. Preferably, both.

    The murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, offered the latter. Reiner was a popular actor (“Meathead” on the “All in the Family” TV show) and much admired film director (“Stand by Me”, “When Harry Met Sally”). He and his wife were discovered stabbed to death in their home. One of their sons is being held for the killings. It can’t get any more horrible for those who loved and admired them.

    Reiner also happened to be an outspoken critic, a strong and constant voice, warning of the perils of a Trump presidency. To Trump, he was an enemy.

     So, some time in the night Sunday or early Monday, he spouted his tribute, as the person occupying the Oval Office, to a much loved, admired and respected American public figure:

   “A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

    Pathetic. Spiteful. Childish. Hateful. Trump. Why is he talking? Because he has to. It’s his addiction. It’s all he knows.

     But this is really old news about Trump and my gripe here, as it has been for some nine years, is with virtually every elected Republican official in the United States of America: Why do they put up with this excrement?

      That is, why aren’t they talking? Why have they allowed themselves to be defined by such an insecure, hateful shell of a human being. Why have they allowed him to try to destroy this country one day at a time?

   It’s as if they’re still all standing out in the corner of the school yard with the stupid rich kid, who has all the pot and beer and money and a lot of equally stupid “friends“ who will follow you home from school if you even suggest something negative about their rich friend.

    And yes, my gripe is also with the millions of Americans who don’t bother to vote because “it doesn’t matter” and who’ve gone about their lives as if the daily destruction of their country is no business of theirs. Why aren’t they talking?

    “Silence in the face of authoritarianism is complicity. Speaking out is a patriotic act. Democracy doesn’t defend itself. It requires participation, vigilance and courage from ordinary people.“

     Rob Reiner, patriot, actor, director and decent human being, said that. For his contributions to our lives, he will be missed.

    That’s why I’m talking.

By Bob Gaydos

     With all the celebrating and hope that welcomed Tuesday’s blue wave election results of Democratic victories, I was rewarded with the best kind of all — a race that was a microcosm of today’s Republican Party approach to governing: Unqualified candidate, lying, deceit. Best of all, it was local. And the Democrat won.

      The Town of Wallkill in Orange County, about an hour’s drive from New York City, has been pretty much a Republican stronghold forever. It’s a bustling town that profits from a highway system and a string of malls that grew up around it. It has one of the state’s busier court systems, providing enough work for three town justices.

       When one of the senior justices retired, Republicans offered as candidate a former councilman who is not a lawyer and has no court experience. For some reason with which I am not familiar, New York State allows this. Democrats offered as a candidate a lawyer with 34 years of experience handling hundreds of cases in Family Court and other courts and who also is a key staff member of the Legal Aid Society. A woman, by the way.

      Hands-down, no contest on qualifications and experience. So Republicans, who control the town board, decided the town didn’t need a third judge after all. Couldn’t afford it, they said. They voted to eliminate the position. This, even though the retiring judge said the town really did need three judges and not filling the position would put an unfair burden on the court staff, never mind the two judges left.

      Republicans didn’t budge. However, the Democratic candidate circulated petitions asking for a special referendum reestablishing the third judge position. It passed. But not before more Republican chicanery. 

      They told the Democratic candidate that the wording of the question on the special election would ask voters whether the town should eliminate the third town justice position. So she paid for lawn signs and printed cards to pass around town urging residents to vote no. Then Republicans decided to change the wording to instead ask whether the town should retain its third judge position, making the Democrat’s election handouts extremely counterproductive.

      She went to State Supreme Court to get it changed back. A sympathetic judge said there was nothing she could do, but hoped that the Republicans would do the “decent” thing. 

     They didn’t. 

      Came Tuesday and, following a few months of intensive campaigning, of all things, the Democrat won. Big.

      That’s not all. Wallkill voters kicked out the Republican town supervisor and a councilman, giving Democrats control of the town board. A veritable local earthquake.

       This story is especially rewarding for me because I lived in the town of Wallkill for about two decades and for nearly three decades worked at the local newspaper that would have reported on this incredible local story, if there was a viable local newspaper left in town.

     But that’s another story for another day. This day belongs to Maria Patrizio, Democrat, newly elected Town Justice, Town of Wallkill, Orange County, New York.