Obama, Warren, Sanders are driving nails into Trump coffin

On Thursday, President Obama led other prominent Democrats in endorsing Hillary Clinton as the party's choice to run against wacko racist Donald J. Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election. (Credit: cnn.com)

Part of the TV news coverage on Wednesday.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Even as President Obama and other Democrats line up behind Hillary Clinton, The Record continues to publish Governor Christie's hollow defense of racist Donald Trump.

And the Woodland Park daily appears to have censored the harshest words for Trump from Clinton rival Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (A-1 and A-8).

Emerging from his White House meeting with Obama, Sanders warned a Trump presidency would be a "disaster," according to CNN, and that he will work as hard as he can to stop the hatemonger from reaching the White House. 

As for Warren, she said, "Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anybody and serves nobody but himself," CNN reports.

Crappy AP story

Instead of reporting that harsh assessment of Trump, Editor Deirdre Sykes again went with The Associated Press on Page 1 today, quoting Warren as saying she was "ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to be the next president of the United States" (A-8).

Wouldn't it be rich if Clinton chose Warren as her running mate against Trump, and they buried that Republican male chauvinist pig under a landslide of votes from women, Hispanics and other minorities?

Christie bluster

Meanwhile, Sykes quotes Christie defending Trump for the second day in a row, this time on the front page, even though the governor never addresses charges the Republican presidential nominee is an unapologetic racist (A-1).

Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi's first paragraph reports:

"Donald Trump stands accused of building a presidential campaign on continued racist, sexist and xenophobic attacks, but his campaign is no worse" than past presidential candidates, "according to Governor Christie."

But nowhere in the long story that follows does Christie cite one racist or xenophobic rant from previous candidates he claims were just as bad as Trump (A-8).

Nor has any candidate become the laughing stock of the nation by proposing to build a wall to stop Mexicans from entering the U.S.

And Racioppi didn't find room to remind readers that Christie himself wanted to prevent Syrian refugees from coming to New Jersey and the rest of the United States even before Trump called for an end to Muslim immigration.

Public workers

Staff Writer Salvador Rizzo leads today's paper with a state Supreme Court decision that reverses a lower court, which protected cost-of-living raises for retired public workers (A-1).

That handed a victory to Christie, who froze the payments in 2011 as part of his war against teachers and other public workers.

But for some reason, the editor who wrote the clunky headline refers not to reversal of the lower court, but to the original lawsuit:

"Pensioners' suit defeated"

That treats the high court's decision as if it were a sporting event.

Suits aren't "defeated," though they could be rejected or dismissed.

Hackensack GOP

In another rejection of Trump's hate-filled campaign, Hackensack Mayor John Labrosse and Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino -- both Republicans -- have officially registered as independents.

Noting Hackensack's diversity, they issued a statement, calling Trump's "divisive and racist statements ... completely unacceptable" (L-3).

The city is home to two mosques.

Mystery meat

For someone who has boasted of her Asian heritage, Staff Writer Elisa Ung has a warped idea of what constitutes Asian "fusion" or "influence" (BL-16).

Every single dish she praises in her Informal Dining review of The Front Porch in Hawthorne is made with mystery chicken, beef or pork.

Where are the Asian mainstays of tofu, vegetables and seafood?

In the text and photo caption, the restaurant's name is given incorrectly as "the Front Porch."

In other news -- other sections -- there isn't much

Englewood would do better urging visitors to patronize downtown merchants and restaurants, not visit the city's Web site. The Record has consistently ignored whether Main Streets in Bergen County have recovered from the recession, focusing instead on national retailers who buy full-page ads in the Woodland Park daily, as the editors do on the Business front today.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Readers are in danger of overdosing on Bridgegate coverage in The Record today.

Nearly the entire front page and Opinion section -- editorial, columns and a dozen letters to the editor -- are devoted to the Christie administration's politically inspired plot to tie up traffic in Democratic Fort Lee (A-1, O-1 and ad nauseam).

Page 1 carries a story comparing Watergate and the Christie scandal, but the latter is referred to as "the George Washington lane-closure investigation" -- a clumsy stand-in for Bridgegate.

Road is clear

Since Dec. 1, the befuddled, error-prone Road Warrior, Staff Writer John Cichowski, has been limited to two pieces a week, compared to three or more since he took over and destroyed the commuting column more than a decade ago.

Readers breath a sigh of relief Cichowski doesn't have a column on the Local front today (L-1).

Obesity news

What they do find is a rare story on a support group for over-eaters after years of censorship by obese local editors (L-1).

A positive story on gadflies, including Hackensack's Kathleen Canastrino, now the city's deputy mayor, is in contrast to past stories and columns portraying them as crackpots and mentally unbalanced (L-1).

Funny business

As usual, local merchants get short-shrift in the Business section, which is chock full of stories about big retailers, small businesses in other states and a 4-page Wall Street Journal insert (B-1 to B-8).

Better Living is really unappetizing today with two columns by the unfunny Bill Ervolino, but no column from Elisa Ung, the restaurant reviewer who should join that over-eaters support group on the Local front (BL-1).

More Bridgegate

If you're looking for any non-Christie news on Page 1, all Editor Marty Gottlieb has is another sports column on Alex Rodriguez (A-1).

The first of two Mike Kelly columns on the widening Christie scandal appears on the front page, but it's artificial, as the headline clearly shows:

"Unlikely pair emerges as Christie adversaries"

What's "unlikely" about state Assembly members John Wisniewski and Loretta Weinberg, and haven't they been Christie adversaries long before Bridgegate?

Opinion front

Better is Kelly's second column on the Opinion front, where the reporter with the shit-eating grin says:

"This is Chris Christie's moment .... What happens in the coming months ... will likely determine whether his gubernatorial career will take him to the White House or the dog house" (O-1).

Still, Kelly is much too wordy and sorely needs editing -- a skill that appears to be lacking on the local assignment desk run so ineptly by Editor Dan Sforza or the copy desk under six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton.

'Not a bully'

Also on the Opinion front, a Bloomberg News columnist says Christie's "I am not a bully" will come back to haunt him, just as "I am not a crook" did for Richard Nixon (O-1).

Today's "Storm at the Port" editorial reveals The Record's anti-mass transit bias.

The bi-state Port Authority is described as "a vital organization that oversees bridges, tunnels and airports" -- completely omitting the PATH commuter rail system and bistate bus operations, including two terminals in Manhattan (O-2).

Misses the train

Staff Writer Shawn Boburg, who covers the agency, hasn't written a word about the crying need for a PATH expansion and the addition of a second bus-only lane into the Lincoln Tunnel.

I laughed when I saw the Margulies cartoon, but a Democrat like Jon Corzine isn't much of a consolation prize after more than four years of Christie, a Republican who is the worst governor in the state's history.

Corzine and Buono

The Jon Corzine billboard in the cartoon reminds me of The Record's highly critical coverage of every Democratic governor going back to James Florio (1990-94), and the adoring stories about Christie.

And given the outrage expressed in the letters to the editor (O-3), supporters of state Sen. Barbara Buono can only speculate about the outcome, if The Record and other media had uncovered Bridgegate in the nearly two months before the Nov. 5 general election.

Remember how one of the newly revealed e-mails between Christie's close aides and his Port Authority cronies referred contemptuously to schoolchildren delayed by the early September traffic jams as the kids of "Buono voters"?