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was to call out, without mincing words, Karoline Leavitt for the lying, seditious, disturbed noise machine that she is, when she defamed patriotic Americans about to take to the streets to protect peacefully this country’s future as a democracy.

Disgraceful that they have not yet endorsed the DEMOCRATIC candidate for New York City Mayor.

Madmani should stop this “continuing conversations” footsie they’re insisting he perform, and just let them know that if they don’t believe in Party solidarity, they can remain part of the problem.

All you have to do to recognize what has gone wrong with New York City is to walk by Gramercy Park. It sure isn’t affordable housing that’s going up on the site of the demolished landmarked buildings.

Trump was dumping shit on America in his latest AI hate cartoon — the Times refers to some mysterious, unidentified “brown liquid.”

The euphemisms of the Times were one way that they got him re-elected and one way they keep protecting him.

Dan Froomkin wrote at Salon right before the fateful November 2024 election that “rather than call out the dangerous lunacy in plain view, the Times has chosen to engage in tortured euphemisms, passive construction, and poor news judgment.”

Earlier that year he had warned at his own Press Watchers blog that “The largest, most influential news organization in the nation is not warning sufficiently of the threat to democracy — while at the same time bashing President Joe Biden at every opportunity.”

Nothing seems to have changed, despite the excellence of some individual reporting. You can kind of feel the frustration of reporters who want to live up to their profession’s ideals straining against the reluctance of the big bosses over there to let them.

but it seems like she’s taking zero responsibility for that dreadful campaign she ran, or that was run on her behalf by a singularly unfit group of Democratic operatives.

and did I forget to mention that he’s declared war on the Democratic-run cities of the United States?

A big plot has been cleared on the Northeastern end of the Park, the first development on Gramercy Park since it received landmark designation in 1966.

Landmark designation no longer ensures preservation: vide as well the landmarked houses on Ninth Avenue and 14th Street and the Tony DaPalito Recreation Center. Both sites’ preservation fell prey to what the city cited as irreparable structural issues–that could, in actuality, and should have been repaired. The DaPalito “demolition by neglect” is still being fought.

Then there’s the fabled Palace Theatre, which Carroll allowed to be upended from its placement on the street and instead humbled into incorporation in a huge, unattractive internal shopping mall.

The Gramercy Park demolitions are shameful, one more example of the way that real estate developers are able to ride roughshod at will over the public interstate. They represent a complete refutation of the Landmark Preservation Commission’s mandate. Needless to say, this will be the tallest building on the park.

No wonder Sarah Carroll is (finally) resigning as Chair of the LPC. How frustrating it must have been for a trained preservationist–unless Carroll is a total opportunist–to watch as City Hall insisted she betray her agency’s mandate. But she has been much too compliant, presiding over what is in fact the darkest period in LPC history since its founding in 1962. Carroll “is there to implement the Mayor’s agenda,” another preservationist told me not long after De Blasio appointed her. But perhaps this disgraceful fail on Gramercy Park motivated her to leave. Had it not, dereliction of duty on this scale would surely have sparked demands for her to step down. I’ve been calling for her to do it for years, as the LPC seemed to spend more time devising creative new ways for developers to dodge landmark designation than it did protecting designated landmarks and designating worthy buildings and districts. As they have done with the Union Square South, an historic in -everything-but -official designation district, they stonewall or deny designation over and over again.

Yes, De Blasio’s previous LPC chair Meenakshi Scrinivasan, was even worse, but pubilc outcry forced her out of the Chair very quickly.

It has been open season on the remaining historic, low-rise character of Third Avenue all through the De Blasio-Adams interregnum, but I frankly never dreamed that the blocks facing Gramercy Park itself could be vandalized this way. Now, everything is up for grabs.

This city is finished if Mamdani cannot do anything about the luxury over-development that is leveling neighborhoods–and, btw, destroying lots of lower-rent low-rise housing.

Trump’s latest attempted shakedown of America’s institutions of higher learning involves requiring the victim schools to vow protection of “conservative” speech and ideas–but not a word about protecting progressive thought or speech.

“Trump got another fake physical. It’s a stunning pile of lies and fabrications. ‘Advanced imaging’ means brain scans like MRI or PET to track his dementia and meds. It doesn’t even mention “chronic venous insufficiency” which the WH claimed he had when his big ankles were spotted. That’s because he doesn’t have it. He was wearing dementia balance supports that made his ankles look swollen. The cover-up of Trump‘s health decline and dementia is one of the biggest scandals in US history.”

vented his insanity in a series of secret lectures that the Washington Post has uncovered.

and he’s sure blowing up a lot of South American fishermen. Nevertheless, the GOP insists that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Republicans are desperate to turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse–and the more derelict, illegal, and demented his behavior becomes, the more vociferously they make more and more outrageous demands that he be glorified.