A Hatemongering Pastor Runs For NYC Mayor

James David Manning, the pastor of the Atlah World Missionary Church in Harlem, has recently announced that he is running for mayor of New York, declaring that as mayor he would (unilaterally) eliminate local sales tax and raise the minimum wage to $27.

Over the years, the church's outdoor message board has posted numerous homophobic, racist, and false statements like the one that said, "YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA AND HE TURNED YOUR SONS GAY, TURNED HARLEM WHITE, EMPTIED CHURCHES, FILLED SHELTERS WITH WOMEN & CHILDREN."

Such wild and misleading statements have prompted others in the community to tie handwritten signs to the church's fence that said, " Hate Is Not A Community Value" and "Hate Breeds Violence," and to organize a picket line whose participants represented the city's diversity.

It's hard to see anyone taking Pastor Manning's run for mayor seriously. It's also hard to believe anyone who calls themselves a true Christian being a member of this hatemongering church.

Books To Read In A Troubled Time

It's time to dust off our copies of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William Shirer), 1984 (George Orwell), Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Lord of the Flies (William Golding), The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood), and other dystopian books. They will help us cope with the dark, far right- leaning days ahead. And, I hope, they will motivate us to find ways to overcome them.

If you don't own a copy of these books, visit your local independent bookstore or the public library.

Kooky Conservatives

One of my co-workers (a staunch conservative and conspiracy theorist) at a call center that specialized in political surveys sent me a text message that said: " See [Matt] DRUDGE on Alex Jones sites for [John] PODESTA* doing Satanic ritual." (Sent to me on November 4, 2016.)

That brought to mind a quote from conservative columnist/Firing Line host/National Review publisher and founder William F. Buckley, Jr. In a 1962 letter to William Loeb, the publisher of the Manchester Union Leader in New Hampshire, Buckley wrote: "Why is it our side [that] is afflicted with all the loonies?" (From Buckley: William F. Buckley, Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism by Carl T. Bogus, Bloomsbury Press, 2011.)

Bogus, a liberal, points out on the same page that "...not all conservatives were dull-witted or dysfunctional, but conservative causes attracted far more than their fair share of kooks and bigots."

Judging by the Trump era, that's still true.

*John Podesta (born January 8, 1949), former chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

Donald Trump, America's Savior?

Last November, President Donald J. Trump tweeted: "I am the candidate of...hard-working, law-abiding patriots of every race, religion and creed!"

How law-abiding and patriotic were those who stormed the Capitol building in D.C. on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 when the Congress was in the process of counting and finalizing the Electoral College votes?

The right-wing, Pro-Trump, Edmond,Oklahoma-based religious magazine The Philadelphia Trumpet declared, in a January 2021 article by Stephen Flurry ("The Radical Left's Ongoing Coup"), that "The radical left is making a coordinated, sustained, powerful, illegal, immoral effort to seize power over the United States!"

That description more accurately fits those thousands of white nationalists who terrorized and threatened elected officials and vandalized government property. All of this happened because they were unhappy with the 2020 presidential victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and felt that the election was stolen from Trump.

"Donald Trump," writes Gerald Flurry, the editor-in-chief of The Philadelphia Trumpet and writer Stephen Flurry's father, "certainly has his problems, and God sees those--but He chose him as a SAVIOR, temporarily, for America!" (Cover story, "Why Donald Trump Will Remain America's President," The Philadelphia Trumpet, January 2021.)

Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece, would scoff at that idea. In her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020), she describes her uncle's mindset--"the person with the power...got to decide what was right and wrong. Anything that helped you maintain power was by definition right, even if it wasn't always fair." Also, she writes,Trump believes that you must "be tough at all costs, lying is okay, admitting you're wrong or apologizing is weakness."

Does any of that make you feel that Donald Trump is America's savior?

Donald Trump Will Not Be The Forgotten Man

On the sidewalk at the northwest corner of Broadway and 110th Street and the sidewalk at the northeast corner of Broadway and 106th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, someone wrote with a blue marker pen this message: "IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY 11-07-20." Obviously, it was to commemorate Joe Biden's defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

But despite our elation over Trump's defeat, we shouldn't forget that that doesn't mean he will fade away. It just means he will no longer occupy the White House and that he will no longer be in power.

You can be sure his presence will be felt in other ways via Twitter, rallies, conservative talk radio, etc., criticizing and belittling Biden and the Democrats every chance he gets.

Trump will definitely refuse to go gently off the stage. His enormous ego will not allow it.

Inside The Trump White House

I recently finished reading Bob Woodward's Fear: Trump in the White House (Simon & Schuster). I had a hard time putting it down. Woodward's reporting highlighted the turmoil in the White House since Trump's occupancy: the backstabbing and backbiting among members of his administration; Trump's profanity-laced rants; Trump's flip-flopping on issues; the seemingly endless personnel changes, etc. The reader's impression would be that the Trump administration is something out of a movie written and directed by Mel Brooks.

A Good Idea Is A Good Idea Whether It's From A Liberal Or A Conservative

As soon as a person is identified as a conservative, progressives begin to react negatively as though only people in their political camp have ideas worthy of consideration and implementation.

As a liberal, I'm more open-minded about hearing people out, no matter what their political leanings are. A good idea is a good idea. Liberals or progressives don't have a monopoly on good ideas. The same holds true for people on the right.

Trump, A Crazy Rich Caucasian?

Someone (Michael Moore? Spike Lee?) will probably make a documentary about Trump and call it Crazy Rich Caucasian.


Note: Today is National Cat Day. According to Wikipedia, it "was founded as a way to bring awareness to the number of homeless cats."

Alt-Right Fake News Regarding Alec Baldwin?

Bill Tate, a white, 67-year-old, very conservative pro-Trump co-worker at a national opinion research firm here in New York, sent me the following text message (sent @8:38 pm, 10/15/2018):

"Secret service agents took alec Baldwin [sic] into custody @3pm today; he publically [sic] advocated the overthrow of U.S.A.=SEDITION!"

This sounds like alt-right fake news and wishful thinking. And if true, is a Gestapo reaction of the Secret Service.

Here's what Alec Baldwin actually said per The Hill.com, a political website, and time.com:

"The way we implement change in America is through elections.We change governments here at home in an orderly and formal way. In that orderly and formal way and lawful way, we need to overthrow the government of the United States under Donald Trump."

Baldwin did not advocate a violent overthrow of the government. He was talking about the use of the ballot box to change the government.

My Presidential To-Do List

On the editorial page of the New York Times (November 8, 2016), readers were asked "to list three things the new president should do in the first 100 days in office," in 150 words or less.

Here is my presidential to-do list:

1. Nominate a Supreme Court justice so the court can get back to being fully functional with nine justices.

2. Improve the nation's transportation and infrastructure systems.

3. Promote programs that encourage the use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar and thereby minimize the effects of climate change.

Recipe For A Trump Sandwich

This message was handwritten on a sidewalk sandwich board located outside Amigos, a Mexican cuisine restaurant on Broadway, near 113th Street, in Manhattan:

"Trump Sandwich--White Bread, Full of Baloney, w/ Russian Dressing and a  Small Pickle. Plus No Tax Included."

A Radio Talker Who Reads Five Books A Week

One talk show I regularly listen to is The John Batchelor Show, heard nightly on WABC-AM 770 here in New York. Although Batchelor is a conservative commentator and I am a liberal, I like his show and find it very compelling because of the range of topics and guests (which includes liberals like Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the editor of the Nation magazine.)

In a 2006 New York Times article titled "He Takes the Shout Out of Talk Radio" that is linked to his Wikipedia page, it was pointed out by the author, Anahad O'Connor, that Batchelor "reads up to five books a week." I would love to learn his secret to reading that many books in such a short time while maintaining a busy schedule. I'm reading several books at once but it takes me forever to complete them. Maybe he's taken a special speed reading program that has helped him read twenty books a month. If he has, I'd like to know what it is and subscribe to it.

A New Debate Format

The following is an amazing idea for a presidential debate. In fact, it's an amazing idea worth trying out for debates for any elective office:

"I'd stage a series of three debates, so that if somebody screws up, there's  a chance to fix it next time. I'd hold the debates in an empty studio, nobody there but the two candidates sitting face-to-face and five cameras. No audience. No questioners. No moderator. I wouldn't even tell them who goes first, just turn on the lights and let them talk to each other. That's the debate that I'd like to see."--Roger Ailes, founder and CEO, Fox News Channel, from Roger Ailes, Off Camera by Zev Chafets (Sentinel/Penguin Group, 2013).

The only problem with Ailes's idea is that few, if any, candidates for political office would agree to participate in such an unstructured, risky debate format.