114 points as of 2:59 p.m. Time to sell!
What a racket.

A lot of people are angry over Donald Trump’s oversized sign on the Taconic Parkway which signals the “Donald J. Trump State Park” which of course only exists as a state of mind.

Trump donated 400-plus acres for the park in Yorktown, but the park has not been created and it probably won’t be ready for public use for many, many, months. And yet, there’s the sign with the familiar brand, “Trump,” but with nothing to offer. Seems symbolic, doesn’t it.

I have a proposal—in exchange for the sign, Trump ought to be compelled to sign onto the Adopt-A-Highway program. According to the state Department of Transportation, approximately 5,000 miles of New York’s highways are under the program with 2,400 agreements in place. Any business or organization can adopt a highway, and Trump is nothing if not a business.
His responsibilities would include picking up litter along a two-mile stretch of the Taconic. He can also plant flowers along the road and mow the grass.If he wants, he can pocket the money collected for recyclable trash…What a deal!

As everyone knows (or should know) E. Howard Hunt died last week at the age of 88.

Hunt is the latest member of the cast of Watergate characters to kick the bucket. There aren’t too many left. John Dean is still out there. G. Gordon Liddy, of course. And a few others.

Hunt was the man who bungled the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters and sparked the Watergate scandal which toppled the Nixon presidency.
Anyway, I was startled to read in Hunt’s obituary that he was involved in the successful CIA plot to overthrow the Guatemalan government. He also was a screenwriter and was a graduate of Brown University.

Well, my late father was also a screenwriter. He also went to Brown. And he also was recruited by the CIA and may have been involved in some of the government’s covert operations in Mexico and central America. I’m not sure of the details. They’re a bit hazy. I remember him telling me that he was hired to write propaganda scripts and he was given a gun and the alias, Lewis Allmine. Hilarious. He may have been an unwitting decoy while the real agents did their dirty work somewhere else.

This merits further checking.

In any event, my dad, who lived in Larchmont and died in 1999, did remember Hunt from college. He was a few years younger and kind of strange, he recalled. He hung out with a different crowd.

It’s been bugging me all week. President Bush’s approval rating is in the toilet. Seventy percent of the American people are against his Iraq policies and oppose his plan to send 21,000 more troops into the mess. The world at large can’t stand him.

And yet how many boot-licking members of Congress were lining up to get Bush’s autograph after he delivered his stupefying speech and was walking out of the House chamber? It seemed like there were scores of these clowns handing over their program to the president like he was a rock star or a baseball player. When did this autograph hounding begin, anyway?

Best of all was Eliot Engel, the Democrat from the Bronx who never fails to get his mug into the camera at the end of the state of the union. It’s practically a tradition. He did it again! With his signature glasses and mustachio, he’s the Where’s Waldo of Congress. Engel never disappoints.

Today I have revived the Goldie Award, which was created last year to honor community activists—selfless, tenacious people who have a mission to do good and hold their elected officials’ feet to the fire. The award is named after Goldie Solomon, a Port Chester firebrand….See the little statue? That’s Goldie in the Revolutionary War-era garb of Thomas Paine.

The latest Goldie recipient is Dorothy Brennan, who is featured in today’s column in The Journal News and will be guest in just a few minutes on my WVOX radio program, “High Noon.” (1460-Am and www.wvox.com).

For 24 years, Dorothy has fought hard to preserve and manage the fabled Girl Scout cabin in Bronxville, a place for family and community events. The cabin was destroyed in a Christmas Eve fire, but Dorothy has vowed to rebuild it, and no doubt she will succeed!

The Bronxville Girl Scout cabin burned down on Christmas day, and sadly it remains a charred hulk on the village-owned Maltby Field. Except for the old stone fireplace, the cabin is beyond saving.

The cabin was a rustic gem. It was a place of long-lasting memories. Over the course of a generation, it wasa place for reunions, holiday parties, weddings and other events. In a village known for oppulence, the 77-year-old cabin stood out for its affordable accessibility.

Tomorrow’s column is about the cabin and Dorothy Brennan, a former village trustee, who nurtured its existence and has pledged to see it rebuilt.

Brennan will also be a guest on my live radio program, “High Noon,” which airs tomorrow at 12 on WVOX, 1460 AM. If you’re beyond the frequency, you can listen by logging onto www.wvox.com.

Today’s column, a long overdue rant on the state of television, apparently preached to a large choir. About 25 readers who bothered to call or write today, agreed with me that the “anything goes” decadence of the modern boob tube (See “American Idol,” “Dirt,” etc.) is rapidly taking our society into decline.

My rant has earned me a guest shot tomorrow morning on WVNJ (1160-AM) radio’s popular program, “The Voice in the Morning,” hosted by Gary R’nel, Kathleen Maloney and Pete Bucky. I’ll be talking to them via telephone at 7:40 a.m.

So tune if you to hear me blast Donald Trump and all the other TV hucksters.

Incidentally, WVNJ covers northern New Jersey, Rockland and Westchester counties, and also parts of New York City, Long Island and Connecitcut…but if you can’t get to a radio, then go online at www.WVNJ.com.

I’ve known about the Old Croton Aqueduct Trailway for years, but I never walked it until recently.
By “walked it” I mean to say that I’ve walked a portion of it. The trail is 16 miles long, and I haven’t had the time to go the whole length.
Managed by the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, the trail is on high ground and goes from New York City all the way up to the Croton Dam.
Late yesterday afternoon, I hiked north from a starting point in Yonkers, at the Lenoir Nature Preserve where I spotted some white-tailed deer, two does and a very watchful buck. From there, I walked north into Hastings and Dobbs Ferry.

Along the way, I was struck by the views of the Hudson River. You’re always aware of civilization—houses, churches and ballparks back right up to the trail—but there is something about the hard dirt surface, and the streams and the rustic fences and stands of wood that allow for a feeling of timelessness.

The trailway is one of Westchester’s gems.

Boy was my face red. Mayor Noam Bramson of New Rochelle wanted to hold a breakfast pow-wow with me the other day and I agreed to it on the condition that I PICK UP THE CHECK. We met at the Mirage Diner, across from Iona College.

Bramson is a classy chap and I know he’s been upset with the way I’ve cuffed him around lately about his recent pay raise and some other things. To his credit, he didn’t complain or whine, like some politicians are wont to do. We had a pleasant chat. The mayor ate more than I did. I forget what he ordered, eggs or something. I had whole wheat toast.

The check came to $7.05. Bramson said he would split it with me. No, I said. I’ll pay it.

Then I realized I had no money. My wallet was empty! I told Bramson, it looked like it was on him afterall. Boy was my face red…though I figured with his fat raise, he can afford to underwrite a couple of bucks for an ink-stained wretch.

Nevertheless, I informed him that that I would pay him back. He acted like I was crazy…and said not to worry about it.

Well, I just dropped a ten-dollar bill in the mail addressed to City Hall. In an accompanying note I told Bramson he could keep the change.

I rarely watch commercial television anymore, so if you want the inside scoop on entertainment-celebrity gossip and popular prime-time programming, look to some of my fellow bloggers on lohud.com.
I’m really out of it when it comes to this stuff.

But every now and then I dip my toe into the cultural cesspool of TV Land just to test the level of noxious decadence. It’s like taking a reading, a stool sample if you will, on the decline of the American Empire. We’re sinking fast, friends.

Why do I say this? Well, last night I decided to tune into “American Idol.” But only for about 20 minutes. That’s all the time I needed to become thorougly convinced that prolonged exposure to this utterly cruel and creepy show will lead to brain cancer in laboratory rats—and perhaps humans, too.

“Idol” is not about finding the next great singing star, not really. What it plays to is the worst impulses of human nature— a sick desire to see a parade of wretched souls who are visually unappealing as well as mentally deficient, humilate themselves before a national audience. It’s pure sadism.

And the contestants who can’t sing are either masochists who enjoy being ridiculed or they are delusional. Yet another possibility is that some of them are faking it, merely pretending to be talentless morons while the cynical “Idol” producers are in on the hoax. That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. And it would be fitting because then the utlimate dupes would be the millions of viewers who are gleefully driving the show’s ratings into the ionosphere.

But here’s another troubling thought that came to me as I was watching last night’s show. Some of these “Idol” performers could actually be mildly retarded, which makes them nothing less than exploited victims.

To be specific, there was a scrawny, bug-eyed kid, who tried to sing like Justin Timberlake and his weak voice and awkward moves made me cringe in embarassment for him. Somewhere out there in the great muddle of thwarted dreams this poor fellow has a mother who must have cried as Simon, the resident Brit and lead humiliator on the three-member panel of phony judges, laughed and sneered at him.

The hapless contestant, he said, reminded him of an animal in the jungle but he couldn’t quite come up with the species. Later, the kid thought he called him a monkey, but that wasn’t what old Simon was reaching for.
Lemur, I thought. Nick looked like a lemur. You wouldn’t treat a dog like this.

They laughed the kid out the door, and then for full comic effect the camera showed him walking into the sunset with another reject, a tubby naif with a falsetto who resembled Martin Short’s Jiminy Glick character and who was so obviously innocent to the scumbag ways of the world, that even the “Idol” sadists were compelled to go easy on him.

To watch this crap is to weep for mankind.

But here’s what really burned me. This morning, I tuned into the Fox News channel and the “beautiful” hosts, a narcissistic collection of two women and two men, recounted the great humiliation moments of the previous night’s freak show. Superior and smug, these empty suited men and coat hanger women. were. So perfect.

And how great it was for them and for the rest of us as well, not to be one of those poor dumb bastards who allow themselves to be “product,” packaged and psychologically castrated for the bored populace.

Ah, see, that’s what it is. An electronic carnival with freaks. Caligula, where are you?