We’re back! Thanks for bearing with us during our technological difficulties. We are resuming our regularly scheduled programming, though I am sad that I lost out on the opportunity to post some pretty good content (if I do say so myself), like Ice National Cream Cake Day, for example. I had some things to say about that. But I guess it’ll keep until next year.
And so…
Good morning, welcome to a brand new month and a short holiday workweek. I bet some of you are already on vacation. (Jealous),
I’m also betting that this is going to be a fairly low productivity week, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing (though it does admittedly drive me to distraction). We could all learn to slow down a little. And, as it turns out, this is easier said than done for a lot of people – particularly in our hyper-connected world.
I heard last week about a competition in South Korea in which people compete to be the best at doing nothing. Yes, you read that right. It’s a contest to see who can relax the hardest. This seems inherently contradictory, since the idea is to try to get South Koreans, who are notoriously hyper competitive to be less, well, themselves.
Also, the “winner” is the person who is able to maintain the lowest heart rate over a 90 minute period without falling asleep, checking their phone, or talking. This seems rigged to benefit endurance athletes, who have notoriously low resting heart rates (well below 60 beats per minute in some cases).
But I guess since this was a contest, some sort of performance benchmark had to be established, and to be honest, I can’t really think of a better one.
We are rolling at warp speed toward the July 4 weekend, which always generates a mix of emotions in me. I am as patriotic as the next person, but I’m not a big fan of loud noises – and my dogs are DEFINITELY not fans of loud noises. So, I usually skip the fireworks displays and stay home with the pups, who, hopefully are slightly less neurotic than they might have been, thanks to the calming medications I have enrobed with peanut butter and sneakily slipped down their throats.
Today our neighbors to the north will get a jump on patriot-type celebrations by observing Canada Day, (also known as Canada’s Birthday).
The day celebrates the July 1, 1867 Canadian Confederation that was the result of the passage of the British North America Act, 1867. The Act united the three separate colonies of the United Canadas, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into a single entity within the British Empire. (It wasn’t until the 1980s, by the way, that Canada became wholly independent of Britain).
Canada Day is celebrated a lot like Independence Day – with picnics, parades, fireworks, concerts, air and maritime shows etc. Expats living outside their home country hold their own observances around the world. The holiday also has some detractors – indigenous people, for example, are not big fans, because they believe – among other things – that the day celebrates colonization and the years of mistreatment and suffering they have experienced.
Apparently, Montreal’s Canada Parade has been cancelled this year, due to difficulty in securing funding and/or permitting issues, from what I can tell.
After a weekend of iffy weather- not sure about you, but we had a brief power outage on Saturday night that shorted out the hardwired fire alarm system, which proceeded to go off over and over again at 2 a.m. – a fairly nice day is on tap. Temperatures will be in the high 70s, and we’ll have mostly sunny skies with just a few passing clouds.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden’s family reportedly is urging him to stay in the race and keep fighting despite his disastrous debate performance, even as some members of his clan privately expressed exasperation at how he was prepped by his staff.
The family – clearly frustrated with the team that prepared Biden ahead of his alarming debate with former President Donald Trump – reportedly discussed whether any top advisers should be fired and whether campaign staffing changes should be made.
Biden waged an intense weekend battle to save his reelection bid following his disastrous debate performance but has been unable to dismiss existential questions about his candidacy that are more glaring than ever.
Less than 72 hours removed from the debate, top members of his campaign team lashed out at the president’s Democratic critics — meeting expressions of grief, dread and fear over the debate with mockery directed at onetime allies.
The anger among Democrats was made evident yesterday when John Morgan, a top Democratic donor, publicly blamed the advisers who managed the president’s debate preparations, citing by name Ron Klain, Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer.
Dr. Jill Biden; his younger sister, Valerie Biden; and 85-year-old Ted Kaufman, the president’s longtime friend and constant adviser — plus a small band of White House advisers — are the only Biden deciders.
After the debate, an increased number of voters, including many Democrats, don’t think Biden should be running for president at all. Nearly half his party doesn’t think he should now be the nominee.
Over the course of the 90-minute debate, the president was repeatedly upstaged by Trump, who took control from the outset by unleashing an onslaught of invectives that Biden could not match.
The New York Times editorial board said Biden’s argument that he beat Trump in 2020 is “no longer a sufficient rationale for why (he) should be the Democratic nominee this year” because he is “not the man he was four years ago.”
Editorial boards and editors from the New York Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New Yorker have joined well-known cable commentators and columnists in pressing the president to step aside.
The Washington Post’s editorial board stopped short of pushing the president to drop out of the race, instead pressing him to cancel weekend plans “in favor of some soul-searching.”
From 10am to 4pm, Biden is dependably engaged — and many of his public events in front of cameras are held within those hours. Outside of that time range or while traveling abroad, Biden is more likely to have verbal miscues and become fatigued, aides said.
Biden was in New York Friday for the grand opening of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center on the 55th anniversary of the historic riots that birthed America’s gay rights movement.
Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon is scheduled to report to a federal prison in Connecticut today to serve a four-month sentence on contempt charges for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack.
A judge had allowed Bannon to stay free for nearly two years while he appealed, but ordered him to report to prison after an appeals court panel upheld his contempt of Congress convictions.
Trump’s campaign is planning to present a “streamlined” platform ahead of the Republican National Convention later this month, according to a memo sent to the party’s platform committee.
Trump’s top advisers are planning to overhaul and shorten the Republican Party’s platform so that it will be “in line” with the former president’s “vision for America’s future,” the memo states.
The memo — signed by Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the former president’s two lead advisers — described their efforts to pare down the platform “to ensure our policy commitments to the American people are clear, concise and easily digestible.”
The National Rally party yesterday won a crushing victory in the first round of voting for the French National Assembly, bringing its long-taboo brand of nationalist and anti-immigrant politics to the threshold of power for the first time.
Official results published by the Interior Ministry showed that the party and its allies won about 33 percent of the vote, far ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and its allies, which took about 20 percent to end in third place.
A coalition of left-wing parties, called the New Popular Front, won about 28 percent of the vote. Ranging from the moderate socialists to the far-left France Unbowed, the coalition was boosted by strong support among young people.
Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 4 storm ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean as it steamed toward several Caribbean islands yesterday.
Beryl was expected to strike Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines beginning Monday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center. All four nations were under hurricane warnings, along with the island of Tobago.
“This is a very dangerous situation,” the NHC said. “Potentially catastrophic hurricane-force winds, a life-threatening storm surge and damaging waves are expected when Beryl passes over portions of the Windward Islands.”
Grief and anger engulfed the city of Utica, N.Y. after a police officer shot and killed Nyah Mway, a 13-year-old boy, on Friday night.
The Utica Police Department said the fatal shooting occurred amid a foot chase between Mway and three officers. The officers saw what they believed to be a handgun on Mway, but it turned out to be a pellet gun.
At a community meeting, residents called the killing “an injustice.”
Weeks after Gov. Kathy Hochul abruptly pulled the plug on New York City’s congestion pricing program, state lawmakers have privately begun an informal campaign to persuade her to move ahead with the tolls, but make them less expensive.
The governor posted a clip to social media yesterday, showing herself wearing the shirt with an MTA logo on a Pride flag heart. The image was met with snark from some transit advocates online.
Dozens of protesters marched in Midtown Saturday, lamenting what they’d hoped would be the eve of congestion pricing in Manhattan.
New York leads the nation in population loss – more than 630,000 residents have left New York since 2020 – with political leaders quick to point fingers at what they say is to blame.
A bill creating the Albany County Pine Hills Land Authority to deal with the property from the now former College of St. Rose has become law, after Hochul attached her signature Friday.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the head of the City Council agreed on a $112.4 billion budget Friday, ending months of conflict over cuts that dragged the mayor’s approval ratings to record lows.
There will be restorations to a slew of key city agencies the Council had prioritized going into negotiations – $100 million to early childhood development programs; $58.3 million for city libraries, which had cut services; and $53 million for cultural institutions.
With just hours left on the deadline clock, the New York City Council yesterday voted to approve a $112.4 billion budget that restores almost all of the cuts proposed by Mayor Adams and adds about $1 billion to what he proposed in April.
Mayor Adams applauded the 46-3 vote, which saw the only opposition from Democratic Socialist council members Tiffany Caban, Shahana Hanif and Alexa Aviles.
It’s the third annual budget passage from the pair the mayor has dubbed the “Adams and Adams law firm,” harkening back to their shared last name, high school and upbringing.
“We guided the plane through all the turbulence,” the mayor said, brandishing a toy airplane while borrowing City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ metaphor of the contentious budget deal and describing themselves as co-pilots landing the plane.
More than 10,000 crime victims in New York could lose access to recovery resources this summer, advocates say, after Mayor Adams cut funding for a widely used program.
Tens of thousands of people wrapped themselves in L.G.B.T.Q. Pride flags and wore their brightest rainbow gear to celebrate the New York City Pride March yesterday. Despite the cloudy, humid day, gold and silver glitter lit up the sky.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators climbed over barricades, tossed fake blood and held up the Pride March. About a dozen protesters descended on the annual march as it approached Christopher St. and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village around 2:45 p.m.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh wants to “fix” the behavior of her department’s predominately male workforce — but can’t figure out how to extinguish their flames of discontent.
A kerfuffle has erupted over sharing the street in Queens, New York, where new bike lanes have replaced some parking spaces in residential areas.
As the Archdiocese of New York and its insurance company, Chubb, battle over who is responsible for millions in potential payouts to survivors of clergy sexual abuse, a new group has entered the picture: the Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation.
Police have discovered two bodies in the waters off the Rockaways, not far from where two teenage swimmers disappeared under the waves just over a week ago.
Four people were killed and nine were injured after a minivan crashed into a nail salon on Long Island Friday afternoon, the authorities said. The police say the man was driving while intoxicated.
A fire destroyed the Shepard Park amphitheater in Lake George early yesterday morning, just hours after it was supposed to host a concert.
The Glens Falls Chronicle reported that the fire was called in shortly before 4 a.m. by someone who had been seeking shelter there.
As Freihofer’s closes out its final year sponsoring the Saratoga Jazz Festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the 47-year-old festival is looking to a future with a new partner: GE Vernova, standalone General Electric’s power and renewable energy division.
Hudson Valley Community College just got a multimillion dollar donation – but not of cash. The college received three U.S. Air Force jets for its fledgling Aviation Maintenance Technician School.
Theodore Roosevelt’s silver pocket watch traveled all over the world with the 26th president of the United States. Over a century later, it somehow wound up in a Florida auction house. It was returned to Sagamore Hill at a ceremony last week.
The United States will send four members of its 2020 Olympic team to Paris — Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey — reserving one singular spot for a rookie. That went to the youngest rookie of all, 16-year-old Hezly Rivera.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
