NOTE: Entries today later and briefer than usual, or missing. Visitors are encouraged to scroll down to previous ones and click on sources of news and opinion for fresher news and opinion.

For today, the first reprint, lightly edited, of a July 19 message to a friend in the U.S. Southwest who used to work in New York State government, included here only because of the outspokenness of the NYC Democratic mayoral primary victor, state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, against Israel’s U.S.-supported genocide in the Gaza Strip. (GAZA 7-19-25 is HERE, or scroll down.  MEDIA and UKRAINE entries for this date are HERE and HERE, or scroll up or down.) — MCM

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You may know someone who knew the winner of the Dems’ NYC primary from his time in the Assembly. I have not followed his political pursuits of recent months, haven’t known how to spell or pronounce his name, or what he looks like — most dark-haired bearded males his age look alike to me.

I see similarities between him and TR and so will try to find my copy of “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin or borrow it from a library. TR served in the Assembly and (I seem to remember from that book) was out of favor with his party’s establishment or its NYC branch who wanted to get him out of the city — perhaps out of favor in some of the same ways Truman was with the Prendergast machine in Missouri, and Sanders was with the Paquette machine in Burlington. 

I haven’t yet  opened the Harper’s that came yesterday featuring something about how the Democratic Party is digging its own grave, but one example is sure to be the race in New York. I did just read “Sun Valley vs. Queensbridge,” by Patrick Lawrence, which seems to ring true though I hope not his pessimistic words near the end of it. Here’s a link: https://scheerpost.com/2025/07/18/patrick-lawrence-sun-valley-vs-queensbridge/

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