Our illegitimate president is dying to sign illegitimate GOP tax break for super rich

Using President Trump's own boastful words from the "Access Hollywood" tape, cartoonist Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News contrasts his election to the firings of Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor, Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein, all of whom were accused of sexually harassing women.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

With every tweeted lie and racial slur, President Trump shows just how unfit and unstable he is to hold the highest office in the land.

Yet, just before 2 a.m. Saturday, Senate Republicans, with only one holdout, approved Trump's massive tax break for the super rich, including wealthy corporations that threatened to withhold GOP campaign funds in the crucial 2018 midterm elections.

They would go into effect on Jan. 1, according to Vox.com:

"Republicans are on track to pass a tax bill by the end of the year, and if they’re able to stick to that schedule and the bill is signed by ... Trump, it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

"The sweeping overhaul of taxes would reduce rates for corporations and individuals (although individual tax cuts would eventually expire), and would also repeal the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, effectively kicking 13 million people off their insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

"But Americans won’t see a big difference in their tax return when they sit down to file this spring; the proposed cuts in the bill contains would show up the following year.

"'When they’ll really see the difference is a year from March and April,' said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget."

A big disappointment in terms of news coverage is how the media continue to quote the multitude of lies Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans have told about the economic benefits of their bill.

And in a news analysis on Saturday, The Times questioned whether the coming big win will help or hurt Republicans:

"...It remained to be seen whether the result ... will spare Republicans from the emerging political backlash that was evident in Democratic election victories around the country last month."

Russian probe

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn became the fourth Trump insider to plead guilty or be indicted in the probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and the special counsel expects him to cooperate and implicate others.

Emails shared with The New York Times and newly public documents reveal that Flynn was in touch with senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after his pre-inauguration discussions with Russia's ambassador, contradicting the White House's portrayal of "a rogue actor," the newspaper reported.

Prosecutors also have interviewed Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and adviser.

"FLYNN READY TO NAME NAMES"  was the all-caps headline Saturday on the front page of The Record of Woodland Park, my local daily newspaper.

Political cartoonist Dave Granlund commenting on the firing of "Today" show host Matt Lauer after women complained about sex harrasment and worse. The Record of Woodland Park described him as the "lovable" co-host of the NBC morning show.

Is Trump insane?

In today's Record of Woodland Park, Columnist Mike Kelly must be the last journalist in America to question Trump's sanity (Opinion front).

On Friday's front page, Kelly used one of his favorites words in the first sentence of a column on a job fair for state prison inmates who were about to be released.

"Robert Fudali stood in the center of a gymnasium at Northern State Prison in Newark ... and gazed into his future."

Kelly has used the word "gaze," "gazed" or "gazing" so many times in the past that some readers' eyes just roll when they see it.

Here is Kelly's first sentence from a May 31, 2007, column: 

"Brandon Kennedy gazed through the chain-link fence outside his Paramus school on Wednesday."

And when Kelly doesn't use the word, many readers notice, as I did for Eye on The Record when I read his 2014 column on Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer:

"Today's paper doesn't add a thing to the Bridgegate scandal, especially Mike Kelly's lame column on Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, one of the Democrats who have complained about the GOP bully's muscle flexing (A-1).

"His lead paragraph is a turnoff:

"'Dawn Zimmer sits in a chair in a quiet, sun-splashed conference room next to her mayor's office on the second floor of Hoboken's City Hall.

"At least the burned-out columnist didn't have her 'gazing' out the window or into the distance or whatever, as he has had so many other subjects in the past.

"With an intro like that, readers fully expect the reporter ... will tell them next where City Hall restrooms are located."

NJ Transit

Every weekday morning, thousands of NJ Transit commuters wonder whether they'll find a seat on their rush-hour bus or train.

Thanks to Governor Christie's drastic funding cuts and the do-nothing Port Authority, NJ Transit service hasn't been expanded in decades.

Don't tell that to Curtis Tate, who spends all his time writing about everything but the service, as he does today on Page 1:

"Management exodus at NJ Transit"

By firing Comey to derail Russia probe, President Trump started to dig own grave

After fired FBI Director James Comey testified before a Senate intelligence panel on Thursday that President Trump is a liar who couldn't be trusted, @realDonaldTrump tweeted, "Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication..." (Credit: "Watch the Birdie" is from Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune).

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

UPDATE: This afternoon, President Trump denied he asked James Comey for his loyalty before he fired him as FBI director or directed him to drop the Michael Flynn probe, and offered to testify under oath. No reporter at the news conference countered, "Who would believe you?"

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Fired FBI Director James Comey's "calm and deliberate" testimony "was the most damning by a law enforcement official against a president in decades."

So began a New York Times Breaking News Alert sent out on Thursday night after Comey testified he believed President Trump was directing him to drop an investigation into a key aide's contacts with Russian officials.

Here is more:

"Upset about the investigation into Russian interference in last year’s election, President Trump sought relief from James B. Comey, then the F.B.I. director. By Mr. Comey’s account, Mr. Trump asked him to help 'lift the cloud.'

"But thanks to Mr. Trump’s own actions, the cloud darkened considerably on Thursday and now seems likely to hover over his presidency for months, if not years, to come.

"Rather than relieve the pressure, Mr. Trump’s decision to fire Mr. Comey has generated an even bigger political and legal threat. In his anger at Mr. Comey for refusing to publicly disclose that the president was not personally under investigation, legal experts said, Mr. Trump may have actually made himself the target of an investigation."

Trump as liar

In his blunt testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey said of Trump, "I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting ...," and at another point, referred to the president's propensity to lie as "the nature of the person."

He also said, "Those were lies, plain and simple," referring to White House explanations for his firing.

Comey testified he leaked memos he wrote after conversations with Trump to a reporter.

He hoped that would lead the Justice Department to name a special counsel, "who he believed would look into the possibility of obstruction," The Times reported on Thursday.

"It was the first public suggestion that prosecutors would investigate the president," The Times said.

Other coverage

Most of the other news media, including The Record of Woodland Park, politicized the question of obstruction of justice by asking Republicans like Governor Christie and Democrats for their take on the testimony.

Predictably, their opinions were completely partisan. 

"Christie says Trump is OK, based on testimony," according to a blurb on The Record's front page today, referring readers to a story on Page 10A.

Columnist Mike Kelly was sent once again to Allendale, where Comey grew up, to interview residents at the Allendale Bar and Grill about the wealthy town's "favorite son."

Kelly also interviewed Comey's father, J. Brian Comey, 86, a Republican and former Allendale councilman.

"The elder Comey feels angry and betrayed by a president who fired his 56-year-old son from the top post at the FBI and then called him 'crazy' and a 'real nut job,'" Kelly reports today (1A and 11A).

"Trump is a liar," the elder Comey said, echoing his son.

Trump tweet

Trump's tweet claiming "vindication" also said, "and WOW, Comey is a leaker!"

The Liar-In-Chief was referring to Comey's testimony he gave his memos to a friend, who leaked them to a reporter. 

That led to the appointment of a former FBI director, Robert Mueller, as special counsel in the investigation of Russian meddling in the election.  

Bravo! 

Comey has a long line of distinguished predecessors, including the FBI agent who was the Washington Post's "Deep Throat" in the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of President Nixon.

And let's not forget Daniel Ellsberg, a former U.S. military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. 

On Facebook: Donald Trump is not my President

Two days after jet crash near Teterboro, pilots still are unidentified charred corpses

Boy, the shit is really hitting the fan in the nation's capital after The New York Times reported that in February, President Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to end the investigation of Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser who resigned after lying about his contacts with Russian officials. This cartoon -- "ANYONE CAN GROW UP TO BE PRESIDENT" -- is by John Cole of the Times-Tribune in Scranton, Pa.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

Editor's note: This post has been updated with the identity of the co-pilot who died in Monday's crash of a Learjet near Teterboro Airport.

VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

How long should it take for a newspaper like The Record to identify the two pilots whose Learjet crashed and burned short of their Teterboro Airport runway on Monday afternoon?

Thousands of words about the crash appear in the paper today, but readers don't know their names or whether they left behind wives, children or parents.

The focus today is on whether the pilots' decision to stay in Manhattan instead of Philadelphia set them up to crash as the result of a "rogue gust of wind" near Teterboro Airport (1A).

Check out the amateurish photos on Page 1 today: 

The bigger one is a trick shot of another jet landing at Teterboro that seems to show the aircraft below telephone-pole wires on Route 46.

Above that, a photo shows police officers gathered near their vehicles. What the F! That's worthy of the front page?

Trailer park news

Meanwhile, veteran Columnist Mike Kelly could have chosen any of the thousands of people who live in Hackensack high-rises or homes in Carlstadt or other towns to illustrate the danger and menace of the airport.

Instead, he found a 30-year-old man who lives with his "mother, brother, sister and three dogs" in a Moonachie trailer park across the street from the south end of the jetport.

The headline:

"Airport's neighbors still struggle with anxiety"

When the jet hit the parking lot of Carlstadt's public works building and burst into flames, Matt Vitale heard a "boom -- loud, metallic, deadly," Kelly says (6A).

"The trailer shook. The dogs started barking. Vitale got no sleep."

Another Kelly column that undoubtedly will be submitted for a Pulitzer Prize.

This evening, HackensackDailyVoice.com identified the co-pilot as Jeffrey Alino, 33.

"There are reports that the plane was upside down when it crashed," Daily Voice reported.

Living near Teterboro means endless noise

More slanted reporting on aircraft noise

Learjet 35A

On Tuesday, The Record reported Learjets like the one that crashed have been involved in 61 fatalities from 1979 through 2015.

A May 24, 1988, crash killed four in the middle of the night when a Learjet 35A crashed into "a Woodland Park hillside minutes after it left Teterboro [Airport]."

Federal investigators cited the pilot and co-pilot's "poor judgment and limited experience, as well as 'known deficiencies in equipment,'" Staff Writer Dave Sheingold reported, without elaborating.

And The Record's story makes no attempt to compare the Learjet 35A's safety record to other corporate jets.

Trump counselor hoodwinks columnist into splashing even more lies onto Page 1

From cartoonist J.D. Crowe of the Alabama Media Group. You can see more of his work here.

From cartoonist Taylor Jones. You can find more of his work on the Cagle.com site.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Some reporters at The Record of Woodland Park will do anything to score an "exclusive" interview or to "scoop" the competition.

And these same reporters have already forgotten the lesson of the 2016 presidential campaign -- that even when the news media pushed back, all of the lies told by GOP nominee Donald J. Trump and his band of dirty tricksters ruled the day and stole the election.

Now, Columnist Mike Kelly of The Record is being made a fool of by none other than Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, the serial liar who managed the billionaire's campaign.

Conway, you may remember, denied President Trump ever lied. Those were just "alternative facts," she claimed, just as Trump himself called his lies "truthful hyperbole."

Today, Conway and the back of Kelly's graying head appear in a big photo on Page 1 during what is described as an interview in her Alpine home.

The veteran columnist asked her about President Trump's tweeted allegations that Barack Obama himself wiretapped Trump Tower before the election.

Instead of addressing those charges or providing any evidence the tweets were based on fact, Conway spun new lies until her lingerie smoldered.

I won't perpetuate them here, but you can read Kelly's column on NorthJersey.com.

The story was picked up by TheHill.com, which doesn't name the columnist, but refers to the Gannett-owned newspaper as "the Bergen County Record in New Jersey."

Attorney Frank P. Lucianna, with gray hair and not wearing a hat, marching in the 2014 Memorial Day Parade in Englewood when he was 91 years old.

Page turner

The only real page turner on 1A today is Staff Writer Jay Levin's profile of Frank P. Lucianna, the 94-year-old criminal defense lawyer who practices full time in Hackensack, just blocks from the Bergen County Courthouse. 

Lucianna was the first attorney in New Jersey to use the battered woman's defense at a murder trial, "a gambit that won [an] acquittal for a Fair Lawn housewife" who killed "her abusive husband," Levin reports. 

This is a rare instance when Levin -- the local obituary writer -- profiles a prominent North Jersey resident before he dies.

The Record: Columnist misses the point about growing protests of Trump policies

Cartoons by Rick McKee of The Augusta Chronicle, above, and Darly Cagle of Cagle.com explore President Trump's attacks against federal judges and leaks about his campaign's contact with Russia.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

What's the point of drawing parallels between the growing protests against President Trump and the "tumultuous late 1960s," as Columinst Mike Kelly does on Page 1 of The Record today?

Kelly claims that experts "are now looking to the late 1960s and early 1970s for insights and possible lessons" (1A and 7A).

It's much too early for that, seeing as the protests began with the Nov. 8 election of a candidate many saw as unfit to hold the office of president.

They continued during the transition, and escalated 30 days ago, when Trump was inaugurated and began signing executive orders to bar Muslims from entering the United States, roll back environmental protections and take other actions.

His Cabinet appointees also have elicited widespread condemnation, and his national security adviser resigned after he lied about contacts with Russia during the campaign.

Just politics?

The news media might do better reporting that the widespread protests against Trump are unprecedented in the modern era against a sitting president.

The Record and other media have insisted for years all of this is grounded in partisan politics -- just Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives butting heads.

No. Issues matter, too.

As the Environmental Defense Fund says, "Nobody voted for more pollution."

Obama's 'lesson'

If we need to look for "lessons," President Obama provided a big one before he left office: Elections matter.

Tens of millions of Americans didn't vote, and that threw the election to a billionaire businessman who many say is mentally ill, a pathological liar, a racist and more.

At a press conference last Thursday, Trump claimed in comments to an Orthodox Jewish reporter, "I am the least anti-Semitic person that you've ever seen."

To me, that sounds like he acknowledges his anti-Semitism, but claims it's no big deal.

He also asked a black reporter, a woman, to set up a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus. 

Fethullah Gulen

"WHO IS FETHULLAH GULEN?"

The danger of running this banner headline on the front page today is that many readers won't care, even if they attempted to plow through nearly three pages of a related "special investigation" in the Sunday edition. 

One thing notable about the investigation is the byline of Jean Rimbach, who managed to hold onto her job despite being the least productive staff reporter at The Record in the past decade. 

Food trends?

Somehow, Staff Writer Sophia F. Gottfried researched and wrote a long Better Living cover article today on food trends without ever mentioning most of the fare served in restaurants is raised on industrial farms with harmful antibiotics and growth hormones, and fed animal byproducts (bits of dead animals).

Many cattle raised for beef are fed chicken-house waste mixed in with their feed, according to Consumer Reports magazine. 

That fattens the bottom line of restaurant owners, who have lagged behind supermarkets in offering organic or other naturally raised or grown food to their customers.