Donald Trump: People Will Eventually Catch On

As anyone who follows American politics has been made aware, billionaire Donald Trump claims to be running for the Republican nomination for President. As a Libertarian.

He says he is actually running. He holds rallies with significant turnout. He leads the fifteen other Republicans who are vying for the nomination in the polls. His private jet takes him all over the country to meet his public. He promises to release his financial statements including income tax returns (just as soon as Jeb Bush does the same), claiming a net worth of $10 billion, perhaps less than half what he really owns. He appears at a variety of press conferences. He is a guest on news programs. He gets invited to some talk shows.

There is even a Twitter hashtag #TrumpYourCat that features photos of cats wearing Trump hairpieces made with their own combed-out fur—such as Grumpy Cat a/k/a the scowling Trumpy Cat.

Just what and who is this strange-looking pontificating windbag with the flying locks that threaten to ascend like a helicopter in a stiff wind?

He is a 69-year-old native New Yorker born in the Borough of Queens, of German and Scottish ancestry, a billionaire who was given his financial start by his successful father, a New York City real estate developer. As a teenager, the young Donald had been dismissed from a private Queens secondary academy for behavioral problems, and thereafter transferred to the New York Military Academy, where he played numerous sports, including football. He attended Fordham University and the Wharton School to concentrate on real estate studies, graduating with a B.S. in economics and anthropology—as well as a war chest of $200,000 courtesy of his father. Some years later Donald John Trump was even awarded an honorary doctorate by the evangelical Liberty University of Lynchburg, Virginia, founded by that avatar of the Moral Majority, the late Reverend Jerry Falwell.

This was some years after Trump’s Bavarian paternal grandfather changed the paterfamilias surname of Drumph to the more dazzling Trump.

And like Howard Hughes before him, The Donald has a “morbid fear of shaking hands.”

Trump began his real estate empire in middle-class real estate in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, and then turned around a forlorn Cincinnati apartment complex belonging to his father, selling it for a tidy profit. Focusing again on New York City and a variety of larger building projects, Trump ultimately used a $40 million city tax abatement to turn a bankrupt Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt, and created The Trump Organization. By 1988 he had acquired his first gambling casino, and then another, nearly losing all in a corporate bankruptcy shortly thereafter. The year 2001 saw the completion of the 72-tower Trump World Tower across from the United Nations (which Trump insists is 90 stories high), perhaps the tallest residential building in New York, glass walls gleaming with dark bronze tint in the sun. Trump claims to have considered a career as a film producer or studio executive, but chose to concentrate on more lucrative opportunities in real estate development.

The Donald has built a number of other residential and commercial towers, including the luxurious 52-story Trump International Hotel and Tower completed in 2003 and located at Columbus Circle, characterized by a golden world globe at the intersection of Central Park West and Central Park South. A recent kerfuffle over the disappearance of marble benches in the lobby for the use of the public at another Trump tower located at 725 Fifth Avenue—replaced by stores selling luxury goods marketing the Trump name—has received almost no attention by the New York Department of Buildings.

The Trump Entertainments Resorts, Inc. owns the Trump Taj Mahal, and formerly owned other gaming properties, most in Atlantic City. Four business bankruptcies, including one filed in 2014, have kept these properties afloat and protected Trump’s personal assets.

Other Trump businesses over the years have included:

— A television show that Trump hosted, “The Celebrity Apprentice,” which immortalized Donald’s favorite punchline, “You’re fired!”

— The Miss USA pageant, although it has suffered from adverse publicity generated by Candidate Trump

— Trump bottled water Trump Ice, which was short-lived and is hard to find

— The search engine GoTrump.com for luxury travel deals, which lasted about a year before it was shut down

— Trump Magazine, a glitzy annual magazine now known as the Jewel of Palm Beach, which is distributed at Trump properties and through a resort media group

— The New Jersey Generals football team, which lasted only a season or two

— Trump Airlines (formerly, Eastern Air Shuttle), which was a Trump property for about four years before being sold

— Trump University, which has been described as being an “extended infomercial” preying on student fears, is no longer in business, and has been sued by the New York State Attorney General for defrauding students

Real estate businesses are still the most lucrative enterprises in Donald Trump’s portfolio, but other less well-known ventures have met differing fates, i.e., there have been Trump Mortgage, which vanished shortly after the 2007 real estate crash, Trump Steaks, high-priced and still served in Trump properties around the world, Trump Vodka which may or may not still be marketed under the Trump name, and Trump: The Game, a Monopoly-like board game that has survived, barely.

The reader will note the preponderance of Trump’s name on nearly all of his businesses.

His personal life reflects his views on women: They must be young, gorgeous, and compliant. To date he has married a young Czech skier Ivana Zelníčková, who remained a celebrity in her own right, by whom he fathered two sons and a daughter. After their divorce in 1992, The Donald married the pretty young Marla Maples, fathered a fourth child, and was divorced within six years. He is currently married to the former Melania Knauss, by whom he has fathered a fifth child, now nine years old. His children have so far produced seven grandchildren.

No one seems to question his overt hostility toward women who may criticize or disagree with him. That is, as Jezebel noted only three years ago:

“The trouble with Trump is the hostility he reserves for the women he doesn't like, basing his insults and jabs largely on their looks, weight, and sex lives. The most notorious of these was his 2006 battle with Rosie O'Donnell—a fight that was such a media shitstorm that . . . years later, he continues to dredge up when he needs some attention. Responding to her comments on The View about his defense of Miss USA Tara Conner, Trump called O'Donnell a ‘fat pig’ and an ‘animal’ to basically anyone who would listen, from reporters to late night talk show hosts. The worst of it was probably a two-minute rant he filmed for Entertainment Tonight that was so vile, the show decided not to air it on television.”

Donald Trump has pretended to enter the race for the presidency at least twice in recent presidential election lead-ups, and then dropped out quickly. But in 2015 he is actually proceeding with his “campaign,” having achieved significant notoriety in recent years with his endless shrill demands that President Obama produce his birth certificate, claiming that Barack Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen (causing the President to actually produce the birth certificate). A remarkable display of crazy, playing right into the hands of similar constituents.

Trump has in recent weeks before huge, boisterous crowds:

— Described immigrants who yearn for a path to legal citizenship or even residency as being violent offenders, including rapists, purposefully sent to the U.S. to harm Americans, and adding that U.S. officials were being "dumb" in dealing with immigrants in the country illegally: "These people wreak havoc on our population.”

— Characterized Senator John McCain, who endured more than five years of captivity and torture by the North Vietnamese, as no war hero, suggesting that McCain might have been a war hero if he hadn’t been caught. (Trump sought and received four Vietnam War student deferments and then was reclassified 4-F for purportedly having bone spurs in one or both feet; draft records are incomplete and neither support nor contradict this claim.)

— Been described by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham as a “jackass,” and in response, Trump yelled out Graham’s private office telephone number at a public rally and urged his audience to let Graham know how they feel about him

— Criticized candidate Texas Governor Rick Perry for wearing glasses as a foil to make voters think he looks intelligent

— Become a bombastic hero to crowds of ignorant conservative Republican voters who are thriving on Trump’s outrageous rhetoric and finding an outlet for their anger at feeling helpless under an onslaught of circumstances that they do not understand and cannot accept (and which the Republican party has largely created)

Republicans worry whether any of the other hopefuls in their party can keep up with Trump’s fast (and profane) mouth on a primary debate stage: possibly the quick but mean-tempered Chris Christie, maybe another contender with courage and a thick skin.

In the final analysis, let us look at Trump’s own prediction from one of his ghost-written books, Trump: The Art of the Deal: “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”

Twenty-First Century Human Males Nesting in Manhattan Island

The New York City unmarried, heterosexual man over age fifty who resides chiefly in Manhattan is an evolving species, an improvement over the Neanderthal but not quite on a par with the average Twenty-First Century Homo Sapiens (“HS”). In my admittedly unscientific sampling, I’d have to say such men are still evolving lackadaisically to make it all the way to HS. “Hetero Sap” might be a good evolutionary point at which to begin our analysis.

Some say such men have been spotted in Central Park since the early 1900s, rarely making fires but rather occasionally jogging slowly around the park with glazed eyes and limping gait. When not moving, they may be spotted carrying The New York Times as well as books about manhood, America, sports, politics, and sex, according to Esquire. They are generally easy to identify since most are balding and wear caps and sport unkempt beards and sparse long hair to compensate.

I can’t remember the other details of their sartorial appearance, especially the ones over age sixty-five. Their clothes are often nondescript, unironed, occasionally unwashed, and may well have been plucked from the chaos of a dusty, darkened closet. These men tend to own a favorite bedraggled sweater or college jacket with frayed necklines and sleeves.

Most of the time their socks match. I try not to look at their feet if they are wearing only sandals.

Ties, a relic of their bar mitzvahs, are nowhere in evidence.

And they have about as much sex appeal as orangutans.

Some say most aging New York Hetero Saps are either exploding with self-importance or halfway to comatose. They remember the cute young things that got away, wishing they were still twenty-five and didn’t need Viagra. Any female over forty is dismissed as Over The Hill.

On the plus side, they get their pants hemmed, unlike the under-forty crowd, male and female, who would rather walk all over the bottoms until their pant legs become dangerously rent trip hazards. Even more important, these aging men tend to live in rent-controlled or rent-stabilized Manhattan apartments, frequently in fourth- or fifth-floor walk-ups where they moved forty to fifty years ago and hence cannot be legally forced out, and as a result pay rent that is significantly lower than the average struggling young family.

Many have nice pensions and Social Security Retirement checks. They can eat out every meal. They may not be living on Easy Street but they will never be homeless or have to patronize soup kitchens.

Most live alone with either a dog or a couple of cats, their most recent significant relationship with a female Homo Sapiens having ended fifteen or twenty years earlier. The dog walkers consider their fellow dog walkers to be their real best friends, and plan the walks to encounter these fellow canine exercisers with whom they share the cherished bond of Cleaning Up The Poop.

They also tend to believe that being able to cook one good dish demonstrates that they are accomplished chefs. They may cook that same dish for three months at a time before altering their cooking rotation.

They are less prone to pepper their emails with LOL, prolly, IYKWIM, or thx, but use real words. They rarely text, if they even know how. Most of them can spell rather well, especially as compared to their younger counterparts, excepting young Indian-Americans who generally win the Scripps Spelling Bee.

Many Hetero Saps watch porn on their computers, tablets, and iPhones. Others prefer fantasy card games such as Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft; Ascension: Chronicles of the Godslayer; Star Realms; and Hex: Shards of Fate—titles worthy of escapist adolescents. Still others play video games including the most popular (League of Legends) for hours at a time, most of them violent and misogynistic. Nearly all these games feature omnipotent heroes, otherworldly villains, dragons, dangerous animals, voluptuous maidens in distress, in short, the animated stuff of early comic books come vividly to life on a small dark screen and sold as software on playing platforms.

For those of us who are unfamiliar with the gaming culture, it is a huge world unto itself, lucrative, apparently mesmerizing, with all failures remaining online—not visible to real people. After all, Hetero Saps fear public humiliation above all things.

The men who spend so many hours watching porn and participating in gaming tend to be proficient in utilizing the hoards of new apps flooding the electronic market. They enjoy technological challenges. When I was a kid, they might have been trading comic books or blowing up chemistry kits in the family basement.

Which is to say, they’re not ignorant, merely dumb.

It’s when they try to relate to people, especially those of the female persuasion, that they fall short of the mark. Pretty damned short, if you ask me.

So I’ll put it to the Hetero Saps of the city with whom I cross paths from time to time: Why won’t you make an effort to have a real conversation? What emotional distress are you sublimating that needs to be aired? Why are you so afraid to be part of the real world? And what childhood/young manhood traumas trigger adrenaline and other stress hormones to send you running from your female contemporaries without a backward glance or farewell?

Did a favorite aunt try to smother you with a pillow in your crib? Were you forced to help your mother do the laundry? Did your father humiliate you for your inability to hit a baseball further than ten feet? Were you generally the last to be chosen for games at recess? And have too many marriages dissolved when your wives walked out on you or dates ended when your female companions simply disappeared?

What caused you to quit evolving all the way to Homo Sapiens and regress to your childhood? Was Darwin mistaken in his groundbreaking book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection? Or have the Manhattan Hetero Saps simply been overtaken and left behind during the selection process?

What's the Matter with Kansas (Redux)?

I read the news and I shudder.

Thanks to the curdled “leadership” of Governor Sam Brownback, Kansas welfare recipients cannot, according to a new bill just signed into law, access their $400 per month benefits in cash except to a limit of $25 per day from an ATM. That would mean making 16 withdrawals each and every month. Or, the Governor suggested, people could pay their bills with money orders. If their creditors would not accept payment by the state’s debit cards.

Hey, Gov, money orders can cost up to $5 each (when’s the last time Sammy boy bought a money order to pay for anything?). Four hundred dollars won’t go far if money order fees consume a chunk of it.

And suppose it’s February, like the February we just survived, and the temperature is below zero and folks really don’t feel like going to the ATM in order to get money for food or other necessities.

A Kansas advocacy group issued a statement pointing out that this new law will prevent many poor families from participating in other support programs, including a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.

There’s more, a whole lot more.

Welfare recipients who have the misfortune to live in the great state of Kansas, home of some of the craziest of the right-wing loonies, cannot use their benefits to spend money for alcoholic beverages, casino gambling or gaming, jewelry, tattoos, massages, body piercings, spas, nail salons, lingerie (you mean they can’t buy underwear?), tobacco, vapor cigarettes, fortune-tellers, bail bonds, video arcades, movies at theaters, access to swimming pools, cruise ships, theme parks, race tracks or off-track betting, lottery tickets, concert tickets (no Taylor Swift or Eminem for you!), most sporting events, any other entertainment events open to the general public, sex paraphernalia, strip clubs, and places where minors under 18 are not permitted (i.e., bars and sex clubs).

Ah, but there is a saving grace in the Gov’s bill: Kansas recipients of welfare can buy guns with their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cards. (Does this mean that our friends and neighbors on welfare might apply for TANF just to acquire money to buy a Ruger, a Glock, or a Smith and Wesson? And then hold up their friendly neighborhood grocery stores? Or even the aforementioned off-limits liquor stores? The possibilities are endless.)

And what is to prevent these needy folks from withdrawing cash and then spending the money on any of the verboten items in Brownback’s miserly legislation? Nothing at all. There appears to be no provision for body cams or electronic tracking devices to be attached to the ankles of the presumed-to-be-guilty-of-spending-money-to-survive recipients of TANF money. (What? No surveillance? But Kansas has implied that people who get welfare are up to no good. Unless you are a gun-owner. Then you are exercising your Constitutional rights.)

We used to label folks who receive welfare (generally, single mothers with young children) “welfare queens” who drove Cadillacs and had a dozen out-of-wedlock kids just to increase the amount of their welfare benefits and live the high life. Until Bill Clinton put an end to that (which really never existed except in the fevered minds of the Wall Street gang and their toadies). That’s right, folks, the Clinton welfare reforms tended to limit the number of years that people could receive welfare benefits and put parents with children of school age to work for a number of hours each week as a condition for being eligible for benefits.

So the era of easy living on welfare (the fantasy of easy living on welfare, because believe me, it isn’t easy at all) came to an end a couple of decades ago, and the American public, a/k/a the filthy rich politicians and their billionaire corporate cronies, got its money’s worth from those lazy folks who just didn’t want to work for a living. (Trust me, taking care of children is full-time work, hard work: no maids, nannies, or play dates for these families.)

Sam Brownback is rumored to be interested in running for President in 2016. In preparation, he has cut $45 million in his state’s public school funding. The Kansas public schools and colleges are struggling to stay open and it’s only April. He cut taxes for the wealthy so much that he may be forced to raise them again. And now he has become an inspiration to the governors and legislators in other states that have set strict limits on what, exactly, welfare recipients may spend the state’s money on, as if such people didn’t need every dime to pay for rent, food, and transportation. No limousine liberals on TANF.

As the LA Times put it, Kansas is breaking new ground in demeaning the poor. And states such as Missouri (where a bill is pending to deny poor people the right to purchase cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak with food stamps) are emulating Kansas. Some role model.

The New Republic has pointed out that in Brownback’s rush to create a “conservative utopia,” he instead established a “conservative hell.” I need hardly mention that Kansas has rejected the establishment of a state ACA Medicaid program, relinquishing $5.3 billion in federal funding and $2.6 billion in Medicaid reimbursements. Kansas is the only state with a reported increase in the percentage of uninsured individuals between 2013 and 2014, according to Karla Anderson, writing for HealthInsurance.org. This includes a number of disabled recipients who have lost their coverage altogether.

“Navigators” who assist people to sign up for ACA coverage pursuant to the federal exchange, under a Kansas bill that could have authorized them under a proposed state health insurance exchange, would have been subjected to onerous additional eligibility requirements, leading to further increases in the number of Kansas uninsured. Such individuals would have been required to undergo criminal background checks including fingerprinting, provide their credit histories, and pay a $100 annual registration fee. Scrooge is alive and well in Kansas. Cutting off his nose to spite his face, as my mother used to say.

In closing, let’s not forget Brownback’s local booster club: The Wichita-based Koch Brothers, the largest contributors to Brownback’s campaigns. Now there’s a fan club worth cultivating. D’ya think maybe Charlie and Dave Koch had a little chat with Sammy B? You bet your life they did (apologies to Groucho).

For God’s Sake, Open the Door!

In our worst nightmares we speed toward destruction in the dramatic style of film characters Thelma and Louise, whose car is last pictured frozen in time hurtling over the abyss of the Grand Canyon, forever out of reach of law enforcement, plunging hundreds of feet to oblivion. These two icons have, in a hasty but decisive act to avoid capture and imprisonment, elected this catastrophic ending as a last resort.

We the viewers know the car would fall and crash in real time, but we’d rather remember the exuberant women who sought respite from humdrum lives only to become ensnared first by violence and then by their resulting need for survival and escape as they locked hands and sped toward the void.

Unlike Thelma and Louise, most of us wake from our nightmares unscathed, understanding that we were merely dreaming. Perhaps we even speculate about the meaning of such dreams: Do our lives feel like we’re going off a cliff, losing control, heading for disaster? If so, we do our best to exercise restraint if our feelings seem to be accelerating toward calamity. We seek peace, loss of anxiety, and a secure future.

Maintaining status, control, job security—these goals were slipping away from Andreas Lubitz, the young German commercial airline co-pilot who could imagine no life worth living beyond piloting a Lufthansa Germanwings Airbus across Europe, but could not in the end control the demons that caused his “severe subjective burnout” and depression, accompanied by suicidal thoughts. Instead, as he confided to a former girlfriend, he speculated that, “One day I will do something that will change the whole system, and then all will know my name and remember it.”

He was instructed to provide his employer with several medical reports that specified he was not fit to fly. Instead he discarded those reports in the trash. He apparently consulted with up to five different German clinics about both his mental health and troublesome eyesight, possibly a side effect of his anxiety or medications for same. None of the doctors could give him hope (nor did they appear to investigate further or report their findings to Lufthansa, regardless of German medical privacy laws that arguably did not entirely prevent them from doing so under the totality of the circumstances).

Days before the flight Andreas researched online how the Airbus cockpit locking mechanism could be set in play, when and how it could be opened, and how it could be rendered unassailable. The stage was set. He encouraged the pilot in charge to take a bathroom break after the plane reached cruising altitude near the Alps, leaving him alone in the cockpit. He then locked the door to the cockpit, set the cruise mechanism to descend to 100 feet—far below the Alpine terrain—and overrode the efforts of the pilot to regain admission to the controls.

This pygmy of a man who believed his life was over if he could no longer be at the controls of an airliner then sat in silence for an excruciating eight minutes, breathing evenly, even accelerating the plane's speed, while the pilot banged and hammered on the door, ground control was unable to obtain an audible response, and passengers finally started screaming in terror as the inevitable crash loomed.

The resulting impact after a descent from 38,000 feet to the altitude of the French Alps, at about 6,000 feet, occurred at a speed of about 700 kilometers per hour or 435 miles per hour. The plane and its occupants were pulverized when the plane hit the mountains, the debris field covering several adjacent slopes. Rescuers have relied on DNA to identify victims.

There were 149 passengers and crew who died with Andreas Lubitz when he set an Airbus on an automatic course to crash into the French Alps last week. Available audio indicates that the chief pilot was screaming and beating at the impregnable door, perhaps with a fire ax, yelling, “For God’s sake, open the door!” As the plane inexorably descended, the passengers were shouting in fear, their fate determined by a 27-year-old man who could not face his future without aviation but instead sought immortality through a breathtaking act of barbarity.

Thelma and Louise made an improvised pact in their last few conscious seconds to drive off the rim of the Grand Canyon to their deaths rather than spend the rest of their lives in prison, but Andreas Lubitz made no pact with any of the occupants of the plane he piloted into the side of a French mountain. They had no chance to opt out. They had no warning. They were not willing to end their lives. And so the 149 passengers and crew, young and old, seasoned fliers and nervous inexperienced travelers, were carried to their doom by the fears and insecurities of a selfish, dishonest, pitiable excuse for a man.

It is not hard to kill oneself; there are dozens of ways to do this publicly or privately. And in lovers’ quarrels, it is not unusual that a heartsick or revengeful partner kills his wife or girlfriend as well as himself, even other family members such as minor children.

But to methodically pilot a planeload of the innocent to their doom from the clouds to the mountains below is beyond diabolical. It is an act of aggression against the common good that does not suggest doing “something that will change the whole system, [so that] all will know [his] name and remember it.”

It is madness. It is a crime against humanity. It is the ultimate fear that clutches our hearts every time we are in the air and depend upon the skill of a pilot to bring us safely back to earth. If a well-respected airline such as Lufthansa cannot protect us from savagery like the Germanwings suicide crash, then none of us will ever be safe.

We do not wish to remember Andreas Lubitz. His remains should be buried in an unmarked grave. And although his act may never be forgotten, his infamous name should be obliterated from history.

The Deluge in My Kitchen Begins

This is my first blog entry from the garden spot of Rego Park in the diverse borough of Queens. (Factoid: Rego Park was established in 1923 by the Real Good Construction Company.) I confess to being a nervous first-time blogger, but dear reader, bear with me.

The last month has been spent drying out, demolishing, and rebuilding my co-op apartment kitchen.

Not because I felt like redecorating.

Not because I am sprucing it up to sell.

Not because I am bored.

And certainly not because I have money to burn.

No, dear reader, the hot water pipe burst within the kitchen wall unit above mine, and management's plumber permitted the hot water to cascade down to my kitchen in spite of my howls of protest. The result was a disaster.

I suggested (screamed) that the plumber, who had opened up the wall in the kitchen above mine to expose a large pipe with a three- to four-inch jagged gap, "do something!!" to stop the unabated rush of water onto my kitchen ceiling and thence to the adjacent walls. 

A bucket could have been inserted into that gap. It was not.

The water could have been turned off. It was apparently not.

A hose could have been inserted in the upper portion of the pipe to siphon the water to a bucket or even the sink, if that were possible. I don't know if it was possible but it was not done.

So the water ran and ran and ran into my ceiling and into the walls. And soon huge bubbles were hanging from the ceiling, water was ballooning out from the walls, and even the hanging light fixture held several inches of water in the large flat bulb. All I could do at that point, having already been advised by management and the superintendent that there was "no water" in the kitchens of my line of apartments, was to break out my large black garbage bags and cover the likely water landing spots, and leave for an appointment.

I returned to mop up the falling water and recruit a contractor for emergency action, who reminded me to notify my insurer. 

The contractor, a dashing Israeli who dubbed himself "Ace," came right over and set up a high-speed fan to begin the drying-out process. We had to stay ahead of the mold and mildew that lurked in the old plaster and wall board, and as the days passed and a sample kitchen cabinet was removed, the wall turned a mottled shade of orange-brown.

I remember in particular the variety of dead flattened cockroaches embedded in the wallboard that had tumbled behind that cabinet over the years to starve to death so close to their goal. I also remember their cousins who had made it through the obstacle course in years past and scampered onto my kitchen counter to say hello. Let's face it, these guys originated prior to the dinosaurs. One pauses briefly before obliterating prehistoric insects; I mean, you have to hand it to them, their survival rate probably exceeds those of TeaPartiers. But I digress, and will save the next step of my learning experience demolishing and rebuilding the kitchen for the next entry in this blog.