Driving out of NYC up the West Side Highway and back in along Park Avenue and then down 9th Avenue yesterday, we were duly appalled by the Trumparama along the West Side, something the Soviets might have praised, replacing the TRUMP name with appropriate Cyrillic characters.

And coming back on 9th Avenue we remarked that most of the structures that once made 9th a mecca for urban seekers of charming nooks will be gone within a few more years of continuing Trump-like development, the equivalent in skyscrapers of the marauding of the suburbs by gingerbread and other architectural excresences.

My wife and I cooked up the simple expression for what will be left — Nascar, Cable TV and the Internet.

I am not sure any more needs to be said.

Intelligent vetting at our airports would begin with a way to distinguish between people who would never in a million years propose to do harm while in mid-air and those who just might.

It seems to me that a frequent flier with a valid set of credit cards, licenses and so forth, particularly of a certain age, would not be a likely AR (my instant acronym for Air Risk). The current security mode (the one we had up to yesterday, when draconian began) would be more than adequate to let this person through.

Parents or one parent and child or children would seem to me to pose little danger of AR. Couples or most groups might be similarly downgraded as potential ARs. Similarly people with disabilities.

Intelligent vetting is learning to distinguish risk categories not based on age, gender, race or nationality but on what we can deduce about past and future threats.

We can deduce that future AR candidates would be more than one to a plane and that they would be linked. This would create red flags when two apparently separate passengers from the same city tried to board a plan. Unfortunately, the dominant reality would place a burden on Islamic males and single male travellers in general.

The purpose of intelligent vetting would be to eliminate processes that are deemed needless in the case of many passengers. Intelligent vetting would give unlikely AR candidates the opportunity to carry on baggage. Many older travellers are highly dependent on things like available water, medications and the like. Other travellers want to be able to read.

I personally would have no objection to the wholesale banning of electronic devices, though the very purpose of many such devices relates precisely to being able to use them on planes. Without phones for example the passengers on flight 93 would not have known to act.

The answer to intelligent vetting is applying common sense to the process and perhaps creating a gateway for those willing to sacrifice some privacy for the purpose of being able to pass through check-in with less hassle than seems likely in the wake of current stepped-up fears.

The CNN ladies are unable even to stand or sit still.

Yes, it is not happy to hear that mass murder is in the wings.

But it is just as bad to reflect that nations that should know better should at least be able to assess the public relations value of shock and awe.

One plus in a theology that builds around Abba, Jesus, and the Spirit is that we have no illusions about the depths to which human beings can sink.

It would be nice to just say stop the killing but I think it is more pertinent to say take lethal out of the equation. Figure out a way to resolve disputes without incinerating small children, blowing up innocent bystanders and subjecting young persons to the indignity of learning to become lethal.

I pity Nick Kristof. He tells the truth constantly and no one pays it any mind.

Today I reviewed about ten rock concerts from the last few decades. Can anyone doubt that this is a massive displacement of the frustration that ensues from our acceptance of lethal violence at the expense of our own unwillingness to grow up, repent and do right?

We are the Web, people. Surely we can find some other way. We’re already doing a lot of that. Or are we?

I anticipated the Lamont victory on July 4 and also the Lieberman run as an Independent on his likely defeat. I am well-positioned to say that once again Connecticut is handing over a likely Democratic victory to the Republicans. Repeat history, idiots.

Ranking Truman, Eisenhower and L. Johnson

Number One — Eisenhower

Number Two — Truman

Number Three — L. Johnson

Ike wins for three reasons.

He set the modern precedent for federal intervention in the cause of racial justice.

He correctly said that the US should never fight a land war in Asia.

He warned correctly about the danger of an entrenched military industrial complex.

Truman comes in second.

He was courageous in his defense of civil rights.

But his fateful decision to bomb Hiroshima, and then to bomb Nagasaki, opened the nuclear Pandora’s Box and may well have created the basis for the mentality which has led the US into erroneous foreign involvements that continue to the present day.

Lyndon Johnson comes in third.

He lied to the American people with impunity. He ran for his first elective term on the promise of no wider war. He widened the war in Vietnam and ruined all chance of a true realization of the hopes of the civil rights movement. We have settled for much less than we dreamed and wrongly rewarded Johnson for political acumen when, in fact, he should receive the award for wounding our democracy with a lie so serious that we have not recovered from it to this day.