Trump compares mothers of black athletes to dogs, ignores suffering in Puerto Rico

Cartoonist Randall Enos commenting on President Trump's harsh treatment of African-American pro football players who refuse to stand during the National Anthem, above.

This is from cartoonist Randy Bish. Trump says he's too busy with "this NFL mess" to deal with threats from North Korea that "a rocket attack against the United States is inevitable."

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I've updated this post with excerpts from letters to the editor of The Record, commenting on President Trump.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

President Trump is the undisputed King of Insults, but his bitter, racially charged attack on black pro football players is the lowest blow of all.

At another one of his campaign-style rallies on Friday, Trump said of players who kneel during the national anthem:

"Wouldn't you love to see one of those NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now? Out. He's fired. He's fired.'"

The phrase "son of a bitch" was loaded, given Trump's appearance on Friday in the Deep South, his appeal to racists, his defense of white supremacists; and the nation's history of slavery, when white owners deliberately broke apart black families.

A "bitch" is a female dog, so a son of a bitch is a bastard or an illegitimate child.

"Trump ranted about a wide range of issues as usual," Salon.com reported after the Friday night rally, "but singled out NFL players who have chosen to protest police brutality against blacks by not standing for the national anthem...."

Trump's Katrina

An opinion piece in The Daily Beast is calling the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico "Trump's Katrina."

"As a dam cracked in Puerto Rico, spreading fear across an already devastated island, Donald Trump was in Alabama, calling a black NFL player a 'son of a bitch,'" Joy-Ann Reid says.

"During a 90-minute rant that veered from incoherence to the raw belligerence we've come to know in the Age of Trump, the madman who is president went after sidelined NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick without calling him by name.

"Trump visited Texas, making a petting zoo of black evacuees and writing his name on a wall," The Daily Beast said.

Yet, Trump hasn't followed through on his promise to visit Puerto Rico, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

The likely reason is that Trump doesn't need the support of residents of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, also hit by the hurricane.

They are U.S. citizens, but they cannot vote for president.

Increasing traffic congestion in North Jersey is among the biggest untold stories in The Record of Woodland Park. Above, rush-hour traffic in Paramus moving sluggishly toward the George Washington Bridge on Monday morning. At Hudson River crossings, toll-booth waits of 60 minutes and 90 minutes are not uncommon.

Afternoon rush-hour traffic crawling along Route 80 west toward Paterson and Wayne. Delays aggravate air pollution and cut worker productivity.

The Record

Trump's racially charged attacks on black football players didn't make the front page of my local daily paper on Saturday, Sunday or Monday.

On The Record's front page on Sunday, the editors ran the first part of a three-part series on NJ Transit, the state's mass-transit agency.

But the series is a colossal waste of space, because no attempt is made to explain why the agency has been unable to provide enough rush-hour seats for bus and rail commuters in the past decade.

The main headline:

"WHERE ARE ALL THE ENGINEERS?"

That should have been:

"WHERE ARE ALL THE SEATS?"

Readers on Trump

In a letter to the editor published today on 8A, Karen Chase of Westwood comments on the war of words between Trump and North Korea, and the "double-dog dare you bombast at the United Nations."

She says "dangerous" heads the list of "negative adjectives" being used to describe Trump.

In another letter, Patricia Adubato of Nutley refers to Trump's retweet of an "edited video showing [him] hitting Hillary Clinton with a golf ball."

"Americans should not accept this behavior. It is time to wake up and hold Donald Trump accountable for his actions as president and leader of the United States."

In a third letter, Eleanor Peed of Park Ridge says:

"It is the height of hypocrisy when a draft dodger in the White House berates football players for exercising First Amendment rights."

Kelly on Clinton

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Columnist Mike Kelly continued to obsess over Hillary Clinton, asking coyly, What if she is right about Russian meddling in the 2016 election that she lost to Trump (Opinion front).

But Clinton is far from the only one to make those charges, so Kelly sounds out of touch with multiple investigations, including the main one by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and another by the U.S. Senate.

Governor's race

Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi continues to politicize the race to replace Governor Christie (1A on Monday).

His lead paragraph notes Democrat Phil Murphy overestimated the cost of his plan to offer tuition-free community college. His staff said the proposal would cost half of the $400 million cited by Murphy.

That sounds like a good thing, but Racioppi doesn't think so, saying the original estimate "undercut" the plan, and that it became "ideal campaign fodder" for his challenger, Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

With only about six weeks until the Nov. 7 election, Racioppi continues to quote liberally from the Guadagno campaign's attacks on Murphy without doing any fact checking or asking for rebuttal from the Murphy campaign.

Nor has he reported where she stands on a host of crucial issues.

They include raising the minimum wage, taxing millionaires and wealthy corporations, restoring full funding to NJ Transit (which the Christie administration cut by more than 90%), and expanding bus and rail service.

Wegmans flops

Despite all the pre-opening hype in The Record, a total of only 200 people lined up for Sunday's 7 a.m. grand opening of the 108,000-square-foot Wegmans supermarket in Montvale (Local front on Monday).

Instead of running photos of crowded aisles, the Woodland Park daily had to stage photos of small groups of cheering customers and employees.

Fearing a repeat of the mob of 24,000 that showed up for the opening of another Wegmans in Hanover, Montvale's mayor warned shoppers not to camp out in the store's parking lot.

But only 400 to 500 people entered the store in the 15 minutes after the doors opened, the newspaper said.

The opening of a Wegmans in Bergen County is about a decade overdue.

And a new Wegmans in a town on the New York State border is a non-event for residents of Hackensack and many other parts of Bergen who are happy with a wide selection of supermarkets and warehouse clubs much closer to their homes.

'My favorite paper'

Bob Leafe, a professional photographer in Hackensack, has been using a community message board called HackensackNow.org to catalog numerous typos, errors and other production problems in The Record.

His well-read entries appear under this heading:

My favorite paper is not having a good day