Lobenthal.com

He will do something to prevent landlords from warehousing rent-regulation apartments.

I didn’t realize that Columbia has now fallen so low that it flew its flag at half-mast when Charlie Kirk was killed. Remember, this is the university that claims to be so concerned about anti-Semitism on its campus. Let’s not forget that Kirk was blatantly anti-Semitic, along with evincing numerous other hatreds and bigotries. But cowering before Trump isn ow more important to Columbia, its president and trustees than standing up for decency and democracy.

The other side of the coin? “Columbia’s faculty members have hardly remained silent in the face of all these capitulations,” adjunct Helen Benedict writes at Common Dreams. “Many of us, including a large cohort of Jewish professors, have protested, rallied, held vigils, and met with our rapid rotation of presidents, as well as with the school’s trustees, to try to urge academic integrity for our campus and protect our students’ right to debate, question, and protest.”

It’s the corporate media’s double standard about Trump either writ large or embodied in a nutshell, you take your pick.

“Gramarye” writes on Daily Kos, that Silver “seems to be more concerned with NFL team projections instead of the clearly incompetent, dangerous, fascist person residing in what’s left of the White House.”

He must insist that the landmarked Tony DaPalito Recreation Center in Greenwich Village, which has been for decades a magnet for working people around the city, is not demolished despite City Hall’s propaganda blitz claiming that it is structurally beyond repair. This is the”demolition by neglect” ploy increasingly used by public and private owners of landmarked properties. Don’t make repairs, then apply for permission to demolish. Needless to say, the Landmarks “Preservation” Commission is a full partner in the sham. NYC actually has $120 million in its budget earmarked to restore the building, but the Adams administration insists instead that it must be demolished.

And Mamdani must radically downsize or cancel altogether the monster luxury condo tower that the City wants a private developer to build on land it owns right outside the Gansvoort Market Historic District. This will be the largest building anywhere in this part of town.

It is NYC Council Member Erik Bottcher’s responsibility to solicit Mamdani’s aid in foiling such an offensive strike against affordable housing, but while Village Preservation has been urging Bottcher to step up, “so far he has not responded. “

Remember, this is city-owned land that City Hall wants to turn over to oversized luxury development.

due to their destruction of USAID., while Trump avidly presided over American children’s starvation when he denied them SNAP benefits, and now is fighting tooth and nail to cover up for for pedophilia.

And Trump and his sociopathic handlers have the obscene audacity to prompt him to invoke the Bible and its admonitions to protect children and the vulnerable.

He’s treating it as his own imperial venue.

The Washington Post reports that, having drained KC’s finance because of the blight his takeover has inflicted on it, he now is installing–rent free!– the FIFA World Cup for three weeks, disruptive in terms of process the normal functioning and programming at the Center.

He sure is surrounded by them.

Mamdani’s endorsement of ballot questions 2-2-4, which were an attack on democracy in NYC and a city-obliterating giveaway to the developers, started his mayoralty on a disabled foot before it had even begun. He’d better find a way to course correct FAST. NYC is not going to tolerate another hustle like De Blasio’s “affordable housing” shell game, on which Adams doubled down. Now the lifting of all zoning limits and height and density restrictions comes without even the premise of a possibility that developers will have to produce anything resembling affordable housing in their luxury behemoths—which are built at the actual expense of actual more-affordable housing–lower-rise, lower-rent buildings which are now razed even when they contain rent-regulatied units.

The up zoning blitz was begun by Bloomberg, yet as indifferent was he was to neighborhood preservation or affordability, his mandate didn’t include the destruction of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which was subsequently implemented by De Blasio and Adams. The LPC now reflexively denies virtually every request for designation, then it lies furiously when facts are presented that contradict its rubber-stamp denials. It routinely allows already-designed landmarks to be demolished.

Mamdani needs to get it: you cannot be a developers’ pawn and enact a truly progressive agenda.

These senators are weaponizing their treason, as GOP Senate Leader Thune is trying to secure a payday for the insurrectionists in the new funding bill. Their claims that Jack Smith tapped their phones and violated their rights are completely baseless, but serve to distract the public from their complicity.

Reports indicate that Trump will indicate his handmaiden Pam Bondi to settle with them instantly, because of course they have no case, but settling will both enrich Trump stooges for their betrayal of America as well as–so they hope–persuade Americans to wipe the slate clean in a revisionist mass amnesia.

It’s all part of the monstrous criminal sham being perpetuated by Trump and the Republicans. And it’s all part of the fascist playbook, in which state perpetrators of crime claim that they are the victims.

Happens again and again. It shouldn’t be happening here. It is.

Schumer voted against, but actually AUTHORIZED the Democrats’ surrender caucus to broker a capitulation to the Republicans.

“The mystery is why Schumer keeps flirting with capitulation in exchange for nothing,” David Dayden wrote in The American Prospect two days ago.

“Even when Schumer and centrist Democrats have been dealt a strong hand, these are the sort of players who would fold a royal flush.”

They seem to be on the verge of another one of their calamitous caves, voting to end the shut down without ANY protection of ACA subsidies.

Even when Democrats win in a rout, they still govern as if they lost. Did last week just not happen?

Robert Davis at Raw Story reports on the rising outrage.