Search Results

By Lisa Goldberg MS, CNS, CDN What could be worse for your waistline than sheltering in your home with the refrigerator not far from sight? During this uncertain time that we are living in, do you find yourself opening the door to the fridge countless times a day? Are you turning to food more than ever before because you’re stressed, or you need an activity or you’re just plain bored? Several months have now passed since we got stay-at-home orders due to coronavirus. Right now, much of the chatter on the internet revolves around gaining “the Quarantine 15” or “the “COVID 19.” Like many of my clients who struggle with emotional eating and yo-yo dieting, do you find that your eating as of late has nothing to do with being hungry? You may be using food to cope with the stress of the pandemic because you repeatedly tell yourself that “food makes me feel better,” but in your heart you know that it doesn’t. If you find your clothes are getting tighter and you’ve decided that you will worry about it later, it’s time to nip it in the bud right now! Because the truth is, if you are gaining weight from stress and mindless eating, you will only be mad at yourself when the pandemic is over, and your social life resumes. This is 100% avoidable. Remember, you are responsible for taking care of yourself no matter what is going on in your life. In fact, it’s even more important that you take care of yourself when times feel hard, because this will make you feel better about the current circumstances and about yourself. So, what can you do instead of continuing to stress or boredom eat while you are stuck spending more time than usual at home? Here are 20 things that you can do to avoid eating and distract yourself when you are NOT hungry: 1. Take 5 slow, deep cleansing breathes 2. Go outside (with your mask) for a walk 3. Sit down and journal your feelings and what’s triggering you to eat 4. Walk the dog or play with the cat for an extra 15-20 minutes 5. Take a hot bath or shower 6. Brush your teeth or pop a Listerine strip in your mouth 7. Organize your closets 8. Call someone you care about but can’t visit now to let them know you’re thinking about them. 9. Rearrange pieces of furniture to give your home a new look 10. Stream a new movie, podcast or music video 11. Find a new exercise video workout 12. Turn on the music and dance around the house 13. Start your holiday shopping list 14. Put a cosmetic mask on your face or deep condition your hair 15. Read a good book 16. Do some yoga stretches 17. Take a nap 18. Count your blessings 19 List ten things you can’t wait to do again. 20. Take a look in the mirror and say to yourself “I love you” and remind yourself why food is not the answer to riding out the pandemic. You will get through this. Remember, obesity is a comorbidity when it comes to this virus. The reason we are at home is to stay healthy. So, as I say when I coach my clients, “choose YOU and your health over food you are not hungry for”. You will thank your lucky stars when it’s time to get out of your sweats and get back out in the world. Lisa Goldberg is a nutritionist and weight-loss accountability coach with a master’s degree in Clinical Nutrition from New York University. She is an author, certified Nutrition Specialist, a certified Dietician/Nutritionist licensed by New York State, and certified in Adult Weight Management by the American Dietetic Association. Lisa, who has been coaching clients since 2001, focuses on mindset change, mindful eating and habit and behavior change. She teaches her clients how to break their old patterns around food and eating so that they can end their struggle with emotional eating that leads to yo-yo dieting. Her clients create sustainable lifestyle changes that empower them to change their relationship with food and lose unwanted weight for good. Lisa is the author of the book Food Fight!! Winning the Battle with Food and Eating to Achieve Sustainable Weight Loss, available on Amazon. She served as the nutritionist at the New York Stock Exchange where she created HealthCoach, a healthy lunch program that delivered healthy meals to Wall Street traders from 2003-2013. Lisa is based in New York City. In 2015, she expanded her practice to coach clients remotely and she now coaches clients around the world. For more information about how to work with Lisa Goldberg, click below: http://www.lisagoldbergnutrition.com

August 5, 2020 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an anti-China speech that was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous. If biblical literalists like Pompeo remain in power past November, they could well bring the world to the brink of a war that they expect and perhaps even seek. NEW YORK – Many white Christian evangelicals in the United States have long believed that America has a God-given mission to save the world. Under the influence of this crusading mentality, US foreign policy has often swerved from diplomacy to war. It is in danger of doing so again. Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched yet another evangelical crusade, this time against China. His speech was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous – and may well put the US on a path to conflict with China. According to Pompeo, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China (CPC) harbor a “decades-long desire for global hegemony.” This is ironic. Only one country – the US – has a defense strategy calling for it to be the “preeminent military power in the world,” with “favorable regional balances of power in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere.” China’s defense white paper, by contrast, states that “China will never follow the beaten track of big powers in seeking hegemony,” and that, “As economic globalization, the information society, and cultural diversification develop in an increasingly multi-polar world, peace, development, and win-win cooperation remain the irreversible trends of the times.” One is reminded of Jesus’s own admonition: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). US military spending totaled $732 billion in 2019, nearly three times the $261 billion China spent. The US, moreover, has around 800 overseas military bases, while China has just one (a small naval base in Djibouti). The US has many military bases close to China, which has none anywhere near the US. The US has 5,800 nuclear warheads; China has roughly 320. The US has 11 aircraft carriers; China has one. The US has launched many overseas wars in the past 40 years; China has launched none (though it has been criticized for border skirmishes, most recently with India, that stop short of war). The US has repeatedly rejected or withdrawn from United Nations treaties and UN organizations in recent years, including UNESCO, the Paris climate agreement, and, most recently, the World Health Organization, while China supports UN processes and agencies. US President Donald Trump recently threatened the staff of the International Criminal Court with sanctions. Pompeo rails against China’s clampdown on its mainly Muslim Uighur population, but Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, claims that Trump privately gave China’s actions a pass, or even encouraged them. The world took relatively little notice of Pompeo’s speech, which offered no evidence to back up his claims of China’s hegemonic ambition. China’s rejection of US hegemony does not mean that China itself seeks hegemony. Indeed, outside of the US, there is little belief that China aims for global dominance. China’s explicitly stated national goals are to be a “moderately prosperous society” by 2021 (the centenary of the CPC), and a “fully developed country” by 2049 (the centennial of the People’s Republic). Moreover, at an estimated $10,098 in 2019, China’s GDP per capita was less than one-sixth that of the US ($65,112) – hardly the basis for global supremacy. China still has a lot of catching up to do to achieve even its basic economic development goals. Assuming that Trump loses in November’s presidential election, Pompeo’s speech will likely receive no further notice. The Democrats will surely criticize China, but without Pompeo’s brazen exaggerations. Yet, if Trump wins, Pompeo’s speech could be a harbinger of chaos. Pompeo’s evangelism is real, and white evangelicals are the political base of today’s Republican Party. Pompeo’s zealous excesses have deep roots in American history. As I recounted in my recent book A New Foreign Policy, English protestant settlers believed that they were founding a New Israel in the new promised land, with God’s providential blessings. In 1845, John O’Sullivan coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny” to justify and celebrate America’s violent annexation of North America. “All this will be our future history,” he wrote in 1839, “to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man – the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen...” On the basis of such exalted views of its own beneficence, the US engaged in mass enslavement until the Civil War and mass apartheid thereafter; slaughtered Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century and subjugated them thereafter; and, with the closure of the Western frontier, extended Manifest Destiny overseas. Later, with the onset of the Cold War, anti-communist fervor led the US to fight disastrous wars in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) in the 1960s and 1970s, and brutal wars in Central America in the 1980s. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the evangelical ardor was directed against “radical Islam” or “Islamic fascism,” with four US wars of choice – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya – all of which remain debacles to this day. Suddenly, the supposed existential threat of radical Islam has been forgotten, and the new crusade targets the CPC. Pompeo himself is a biblical literalist who believes that the end time, the apocalyptic battle between good and evil, is imminent. Pompeo described his beliefs in a 2015 speech while a Congressman from Kansas: America is a Judeo-Christian nation, the greatest in history, whose task is to fight God’s battles until the Rapture, when Christ’s born-again followers, like Pompeo, will be swept to heaven at the Last Judgment. White evangelicals represent only around 17% of the US adult population, but comprise around 26% of voters. They vote overwhelmingly Republican (an estimated 81% in 2016), making them the party’s single most important voting bloc. That gives them powerful influence on Republican policy, and in particular on foreign policy when Republicans control the White House and Senate (with its treaty-ratifying powers). Fully 99% of Republican congressmen are Christian, of whom around 70% are Protestant, including a significant though unknown proportion of evangelicals. Of course, the Democrats also harbor some politicians who proclaim American exceptionalism and launch crusading wars (for example, President Barack Obama’s interventions in Syria and Libya). On the whole, however, the Democratic Party is less wedded to claims of US hegemony than is the Republican Party’s evangelical base. Pompeo’s inflammatory anti-China rhetoric could become even more apocalyptic in the coming weeks, if only to fire up the Republican base ahead of the election. If Trump is defeated, as seems likely, the risk of a US confrontation with China will recede. But if he remains in power, whether by a true electoral victory, vote fraud, or even a coup (anything is possible), Pompeo’s crusade would probably proceed, and could well bring the world to the brink of a war that he expects and perhaps even seeks.

By Andy Borowitz August 6, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Alarmed by his plunging poll numbers, Donald J. Trump is actively considering replacing Mike Pence on the G.O.P. ticket with a Confederate statue, White House sources have revealed. According to the sources, Trump is currently considering a short list of Confederate monuments to swap for Pence, including statues of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Reportedly, Trump believes that replacing Pence with a Confederate statue is just what his campaign needs to energize his base. “Plus, he’ll finally have someone in his inner circle who won’t write a book,” one source said. According to the same source, choosing among the Confederate statues is shaping up to be the toughest decision of Trump’s Presidency. “He thinks they’re all very fine people,” the source said. But another White House insider was less sanguine about the strengths a Confederate statue would bring to Trump’s reelection effort. “Replacing Pence with an inanimate object seems like a wash to me,” the insider said. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

One of America’s greatest anxieties during the pandemic is the fate of the crop on top. Hair care — mainly the lack thereof — is of such concern that salons, barbershops and other parlors of primp, snip and coif were quickly elevated to the status of essential businesses that must be reopened forthwith. I must confess that I do not participate in this wailing, lamentation and risk of infection. I trim my own locks. A scissors, a comb, a stance in front of the bathroom mirror and snip, snip, snip. Done! I should also mention that I have no clue how to cut hair. I just hack away. Fortunately, I have access to a hat, which covers a multitude of sins. The last time I had a proper cut was in 2017. It seems I’ve always had an aversion to barbers, probably because my Uncle Jack was one. A rather coarse gentleman of the redneck persuasion, he hailed from Tennessee and took great delight in giving me bowl cuts when I was a child, whether I needed them or not. “Lowering your ears,” he called it. When I sprouted shoulder-length tresses as a teen, he was outraged and made it his life’s mission to get me into his chair. I made it my life’s mission to avoid such a terrible fate. What was once an expression of protest morphed into laziness and frugality. I’ve never understood why anyone would be willing to spend more than $10 for a haircut, never mind the considerable added expense of dyeing, frosting, or other procedures, or why they’d have it done more than, say, twice a year. Then again, being presentable to the public is not one of my concerns. That may be due to having spent 30 years in a profession (sports journalism) where the slovenly Oscar Madison look is perfectly acceptable, if not expected. “Did you cut this yourself?” I am always asked by the bemused hair configuration specialists at the discount establishments I visit whenever a job interview or state occasion requires me to seriously tidy up the old noggin. They never fail to notice and comment on the bizarre assortment of tufts, spears, flanges, wings, shoots, corkscrews and burrs that make me look like Dagwood Bumstead with terminal bedhead. Despite occasional moments of shame, I gladly sacrifice artistry for convenience and savings by seizing my shears whenever I grow too shaggy. I don’t recommend you try this at home, but I simply cut my bangs in a slight curve at about mid-forehead, lop around my ears, and blindly hack at the back, approximating collar length and using touch to determine if my cut is even. (Usually not and I eventually give up trying to make it so.) Sometimes, I’ll attempt to layer the sides for a smoother, blended effect but they usually end up looking like a pack of weasels got loose there in a feeding frenzy. I’m surprised that my wife hasn’t offered to lend a hand. Self-taught, she used to give our kids and me some pretty serviceable trims during our child-rearing years. Now she frequently asks, “You aren’t going out looking like that are you?” but her queries are directed at my attire. My omnipresent New York Giants cap effectively hides much of the monstrosity on my skull. One of these days I’ll have to throw myself upon the mercy of a professional again. In the meantime, I’m happy to ride out the pandemic in my usual shabby state of tonsorial austerity. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic and quarantine, Part 12 By Laurence Lerman I’m going to preempt my whack-a-moling of the films that played a part in my weekly streaming adventures briefly to call attention to the death of two talented actors. Both were well known and respected, versatile and prolific, as well as being active for more than a half-century each. Between the two of them, their careers offer a wide-ranging view of the international cinematic landscape. I’m referring to Olivia de Havilland, who died on Sunday (July 26) at the age of 104 at her home in Paris, France, and John Saxon, who passed one day earlier of pneumonia at 84 in his home in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Ms. de Havilland, one of only 14 actresses to win at least two leading actor Oscars, was one of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, having costarred in a number of films that are now considered classics, including one that, perhaps more than any other, symbolizes that renowned era: 1939’s Gone with the Wind. Earlier, in 1935, the 19-year-old Ms. de Havilland was cast in the pirate adventure Captain Blood opposite the dashing Errol Flynn, the first of eight adventure films and costume dramas the two would work on together. It remains a remarkable cycle that includes such greats as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), in which she spunkily portrayed Maid Marian. In the years immediately following her Oscar-nominated turn as Melanie Wilkes in GWTW, Ms. de Havilland felt she wasn’t getting the plum roles she coveted from Warner Studios, where she was under contract. A battle royale ensued, with de Havilland and studio chief Jack Warner heading to court as the actress attempted to break her contract. (At the time, if actors declined a role or were otherwise “difficult,” the studios were contractually entitled to put them on leave and extend their contracts for the length of that leave, effectively stalling their careers.) De Havilland won her case, creating what quickly came to be known as “The De Havilland Law,” which essentially declared that studio contracts were nothing less than a form of indentured servitude. (Following Olivia’s liberation from Warner, Jack Warner reportedly became apoplectic at the mere mention of her name.) The De Havilland Law on contracts stands to this day and has been used by numerous actors over the years (most famously by Johnny Carson when he wished to break his contract with NBC in the late Seventies). Hollywood quickly rewarded Ms. de Havilland for her fortitude. Her first post-Warner film was the 1946 tearjerker To Each His Own, for which she received her first Academy Award. This was quickly followed by her lauded performance in the 1946 murderous twins noir The Dark Mirror (a personal favorite), 1948’s ground-breaking expose on mental institutions, The Snake Pit, and then, in 1949, her second Oscar-winner, the haunting drama The Heiress. After those peak years, as times changed and she raised her two young children, de Havilland’s career slowed down, though a number of memorable films still emerged—the 1956 romantic comedy The Ambassador’s Daughter was a delight and 1962’s Light in the Piazza a lovely drama-romance. Then of course there’s the 1964 gothic mystery Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, which Olivia playing opposite her pals Bette Davis and Joseph Cotten. Prior to her retirement in the early Eighties, de Havilland popped up in a pair of Seventies all-star disaster movies, the box office smash Airport ’77 (1977) and the not-so-smashing African killer bees thriller The Swarm from 1978—the same year John Saxon flew into town in The Bees, an awful Mexican knockoff about a South American strain of the deadly insect that was quickly banged out a few months after Hollywood’s colossal-by-comparison The Swarm. The nearly 200 titles listed on Mr. Saxon’s IMDb page aren’t as prestigious as Ms. de Havilland’s, but they’re no less varied and colorful, particularly for an actor seeking regular work both in the Hollywood system and outside of it. As far as Hollywood goes, the Brooklyn-born Saxon headed out there when he was 20 and began his career as a contract player for Universal Pictures, taking second leads in musical comedies (Rock, Baby, Rock, 1956), film noirs (The Restless Years, 1958), historical dramas (The Big Fisherman, 1959) and westerns, including the 1966 Marlon Brando starrer The Appaloosa, for which Saxon garnered a Golden Globe nomination. Beginning in the mid-Sixties, Saxon alternated his work in the American film industry with a generous serving of genre work in European productions mounted by producers looking to put a familiar, manly face in their low-budget movies (and on their accompanying posters). John Saxon—like Lee Van Cleef, Mel Ferrer, Tony Franciosa and a slew of others—fit the bill perfectly. German war films (The Cavern, 1964), British sci-fiers (The Night Caller, 1965), spaghetti westerns (One Dollar Too Many, 1968), Italian poliziottescoes (Violent Naples, 1976) and the like kept Saxon busy into the Eighties, while he simultaneously appeared in dozens upon dozens of popular and not-so-popular American films and television shows. Most notably, Saxon held his own against Bruce Lee in 1973’s landmark Enter the Dragon (1973), which is still considered to be the greatest martial arts film of all time. My dad took me to see Enter the Dragon the year it was released—truly great stuff for this 10-year-old that marked my first exposure to Saxon. My second encounter with him occurred less than a year later on TV, first in a The Mary Tyler Moore Show entry where he played a boyfriend of Phyllis, and then in “Day of the Robot,” an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man where he plays a buddy of Steve Austin’s who’s kidnapped and replaced with a super-powered look-alike robot. Our expensive titular hero and the robot have a climactic, proto-Terminator fight to the finish, most of it filmed in slo-mo, which undercuts the action chops Saxon had displayed in Enter the Dragon. But it was wild fun nonetheless, particularly Saxon having his face plate slugged off by Austin to reveal an eyeless mass of wires and electrodes, followed by his circuits-a’blazing impalement on a steel girder. I tracked down the episode this week and revisited the fight for the first time in more than 40 years, after I had checked out Errol and Olivia enjoying some frontier smooching in the 1939 Technicolor western Dodge City. Neither picked up any awards, but for me they were both winners. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

On Leadership, Working Together and the Danger of "Nut Bags” with Big Guns By Debby Waldman In her 2001 international bestseller, Year of Wonder: A Novel of the Plague, author Geraldine Brooks imagines life in a 17th-century English village hit by the bubonic plague. Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize winner who grew up in Australia and now lives on Martha’s Vineyard, was inspired to tell the story after learning about Eyam, a village in Derbyshire whose inhabitants, led by their minister, quarantined themselves within the community to control the spread of the disease. In that way, they did a better job than many places around the world are doing right now at controlling COVID-19. In this Q & A, conducted via email (the better to free her up to concentrate on her latest novel), Brooks reflects on what we can learn from her characters in Year of Wonders, why some countries are doing better than others at handling the pandemic, and how she really feels about Rupert Murdoch. Waldman: Not counting the setting and the time period, what’s the biggest difference between how the plague was handled in Eyam and how COVID-19 is being handled in the United States? Brooks: Eyam had remarkable leadership in the young minister and his predecessor who, even though they held differing religious views, were able to come together in a time of crisis to forge a coherent response. Also, it was a time when science and superstition were still fighting it out.  Newton was inventing calculus but witches were still being hanged in Scotland. We thought science won that fight (the Enlightenment). Turns out, not so much... Waldman: How much of the 21st century version of the science-vs.-superstition debate is a function of the lack of control over messaging: everyone is free to spout the propaganda of their choice and reach way more people, thanks not only to social media, but also to the Reagan Administration's 1987 decision to eliminate the Fairness Doctrine, which made it so easy to spread the disinformation and ignorance that are infecting everyone right now? Brooks: If you could go back in time and eliminate Rupert Murdoch, the world would be a very different place. Waldman: In the 350 years since the Plague killed two-thirds of the residents of Eyam, we’ve made incredible progress, science-wise. We can cure some cancers. We can take organs from one person and transplant them to keep another person alive. We can operate on babies before they’re even born. And yet in many ways we are doing no better (and in many cases doing worse) dealing with a deadly virus than the folks in Eyam did with a deadly plague. Given that one of your sons is a scientist, you’re likely aware that it’s not possible to speed up science. So what do think we should do, given all of our 21st century (supposed) advantages, to ensure that we get through this pandemic and can not only thrive but perhaps do better than before? Brooks: I do think leadership is key. And I do think it is striking how many countries (and even states in the U.S.) that have done the best against this virus, are led by women. I wonder if this is because women are more inclined to listen better to expert opinion, or are more empathetic to the very vulnerable.  I don’t want to be reductionist, though—Maggie Thatcher probably would have been just as bad as Boris [Johnson]. But Jacinta Ardern in New Zealand seems to me the closest parallel to an Eyam-like leader.  Her decisiveness and her empathetic communication skills are very much what it takes to make a community, a nation (a team of five million, as she put it) pull together instead of pull apart. The result for NZ: zero COVID, fully functioning country, recovering economy.  We can only dream of it. Waldman: Like you, I'm impressed with Jacinda Ardern. But sometimes I wonder, is it easier to get everyone on the same page when you're in a relatively small country, especially a small country that is its own island? How do you think Jacinda (or any reasonable leader) would/should handle people who refuse to wear masks and social distance because they think that COVID isn’t real, that it’s a fictional plot cooked up in a Chinese lab? Brooks: I think it’s less the size of the country than the founding myth/dominant ideology. We’re wrecked in the United States by the exaltation of individualism over community.  In places like New Zealand and Australia, “we’re in it together” isn’t a recent slogan to be given lip service, it’s a core belief. You don’t rise by stepping on other people, you “chuck a hand back,” as the Aborigines put it, and bring them along with you. Waldman: Early in the pandemic, Donald Trump promised that the virus would disappear with warm weather. When that didn’t happen, he recommended injections of disinfectant, which gave late-night comedians something to joke about (and sent the medical community into collective apoplexy). Now he appears more concerned with sending troops out to beat up on US citizens than he is in fighting the coronavirus. How surprised are you at the lack of progress that the Feds have made combating COVID-19? Brooks: Given this Administration’s total disregard for science, as demonstrated by climate denial, I am not at all surprised by the fact that the national response was botched.  I suppose I am appalled by how badly it has been, and continues to be botched by certain governors across the country. Trump was only ever interested in the economy, which he defines as wealth generation and preservation for the privileged, and has never shown an ounce of empathy, so it was predictable that when the virus fell most grievously on the poor, the old and on people of color he would quickly lose interest in it. Waldman: How optimistic were you early in the pandemic that we’d be back to normal by summer? Brooks: Like most of us, I suppose I did think that by now we’d be—if not through it, at least in a lull, bracing for the second wave.  I began to doubt this when I saw the nut bags with their big guns descend on the Michigan state house.  That’s when I realized that this nation’s pathologies had truly caught up with it, and we might be in for a disastrous ride.  The stupidity is not confined to the right, sadly. The left-wing anti-vax movement is just as full of false information and just as tenacious about being complete idiots. Waldman: In a Wall Street Journal essay in April, you expressed your frustration that a number of year-round residents in Martha’s Vineyard were complaining that off-island property owners were showing up in March (instead of May, when they typically arrive). The fear was that they’d bring COVIDd with them. How did that work out? Did COVID hit the island hard? Brooks: We did okay, so far. Many second homeowners did come in March and stayed quietly at home with no ill effects.  Case numbers have been generally tracked to lowland travel on and off the island. There is some fear that the recent influx of casual summer visitors are being way too careless. There are, belatedly, mask mandates now.  But I always thought the us/them thing was gross hypocrisy.  This island only has a beautiful, fantastically well-equipped hospital due to the philanthropy of the wealthy summer residents. Waldman: Do you have any optimism right now about how things are going in the U.S.? If so, how and what's the source of it? If not, what are you doing to get through this unprecedented and uncertain time period? Brooks: For some of us—the lucky ones who are not getting sick, going broke or living in isolation—the time has possibly allowed for a bit of a reset on some core values. We’re relearning how to be close families, how to home-cook tasty meals, how little we really need of what’s cramming up our closets. Like everyone else, I hope for a vaccine that is safe and effective. Waldman: If you were writing a novel, Year of Wonders: A Novel of COVID-19, set in the U.S., how would it end? And when? Brooks: That’s why I write historical fiction: so I know how it ends. Debby Waldman is a writer and editor in Edmonton, Alberta. Year of Wonders has been one of her favorite books since she reviewed it for People in 2001.

By Russell Bikoff Do you remember how federal authority, in the persons of U.S. Department of Justice attorneys and U.S. marshals, was used in Little Rock, Ark. in 1957, and Montgomery, Ala. in 1961 and 1965, to protect marchers and Freedom Riders, and to help integrate schools in those communities? My, how times have changed. In recent days, demonstrators for social justice and against racism in the criminal justice system have focused their demands on the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland, Ore., seemingly as a symbol of oppression. But according to the Oregonian, a daily newspaper, “The Mark O. Hatfield courthouse was not a focal point of Portland’s anti-police violence protests until federal officers began to emerge from it, sometimes shooting impact munitions toward the crowd.” Reports are that Oregon Governor Kate Brown has reached a tentative agreement with the deputy director of the F.B.I. to withdraw federal agents from Portland and replace them with the Oregon State Police, who will protect the outside of the federal courthouse. Other federal agents and contractors will remain inside the building in their normal protective role. The next few days will tell if this agreement is real or an empty promise. What are we witnessing here? Will President Trump back down on his evident strategy to send federal agents into American cities run by Democratic mayors in an effort to provoke violence and conflict and, he hopes, goose his sagging electoral fortunes by dressing up as the Nixonian “law and order president”? So far, in the past few days, the Trump Administration has pulled federal agents out of Seattle after a short-lived presence there. Portland seems to be the test case for the Administration's strategy, rolled out a month ago, to combat what it perceived-- or is attempting to sell as-- a wave of anarchy and violence. In their view, this wave is directed not only against federal buildings, but various public properties, including monuments on city or state land. Let us look at the stakeholders. First, there are the demonstrators, who are seeking social justice and opposing police brutality against people of color. Also among the demonstrators are some violent types, perhaps provocateurs or instigators, who at first damaged the federal courthouse and now are trying to take down or breach the heavy-duty fence that the feds put up to protect the courthouse. Opposing the demonstrators-- the vast majority of whom are peacefully and legally exercising their constitutional rights-- are the regular federal agents assigned to Portland, plus the reportedly over 100 additional agents sent, beginning on July 4th (more symbolism!), by Trump, Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, and Attorney General William Barr to augment the federal presence in an operation called “Diligent Valor.” (An oxymoron certainly, given the president’s well-known personal qualities.) The demonstrators have made clear that their focus is on ending racism in policing (“Black Lives Matter”), and that they have no wish to be distracted by discussions of damage to federal property. The few violent types apparently have a history in Portland, balanced by right-wingers who have engaged in their own threatening public appearances in the past. The federal agents have been sent to Portland under color of questionable authority. As the recently filed lawsuit against Wolf by the Wall of Moms, Don’t Shoot Portland and Black Lives Matter argues, Wolf is not properly an acting D.H.S. secretary and has no authority to issue orders, which in their view are void. As of today (July 31), there have been 64 consecutive nights of demonstrations in Portland, with 60 arrests. ( As of July 25, fourteen people have been released without charge and 46 people charged, in 30 misdemeanors, eight felonies, and eight violations. The numbers have surely grown since then.) If the visiting agents are withdrawn from Portland, many of these cases will disappear with dismissals for lack of live government witnesses. There seems to be a game of cat and mouse, with the few violent demonstrators first inflicting property damage on the building and, after the erection of the fence, trying to tear down or break through it. The U.S. Attorney’s spokesman acknowledges that the demonstrators, including those from the N.A.A.C.P., Wall of Moms, and Black Lives Matter are all there peacefully and have a First Amendment right to demonstrate. However, that office is not in control of law enforcement tactics, as they have admitted, which are under the authority of D.H.S. and the U.S Marshals Service (an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice). The federal agents stay in the building until there is a challenge to the fence, and then rush out. In recent weeks they have deployed what are called “impact munitions” and tear gas, sometimes ranging blocks away from the courthouse. There had been a federal court order directing the Portland police not to use these munitions and tear gas, but that order does not apply to the federal forces in the city. There have been a number of high-profile victims of these actions: a young man shot in the head, resulting in a skull fracture and serious injury; a veteran, a West Point graduate, whose hand was broken in two places; a young man filmed by a bystander being apprehended by agents on the street and forced into an unmarked car. These are all subjects of investigations by the inspectors general of the Department of Justice and D.H.S. A lawsuit filed on July 27th by the organization Protect Democracy, and by several topflight law firms, is in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. There it has been assigned-- fortuitously for the protestors-- to Judge Christopher R. Cooper, an appointee of President Obama. If the newly-announced agreement between the federal authorities and the Oregon governor results in the withdrawal of the federal agents, the government will argue that the lawsuit is moot. However, in view of the Trump administration's announced intention to send federal agents into other cities, especially those “all run by liberal Democrats,” (“All run, really, by the radical left” per Trump on July 20) the issue should not be moot, since the same question will come up if federal law enforcement goes to those cities. Also, the lawsuit is unlikely to go away with the government's motion to dismiss or a later motion for summary judgment. The lawsuit claims that the Trump program using federal police violates the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments of the U.S. Constitution, relating to freedom of speech and assembly and due process of law. The lawsuit also claims that the program violates federal statutes, including the Administrative Procedure Act, because Chad Wolf is illegally serving as acting Secretary of D.H.S. and therefore lacks authority to issue orders. The case might go to trial on the issue of whether the Administration’s stated rationale of protecting federal property under another federal statute (40 U.S. Code section 1315) is, as the plaintiffs claim, a pretext to hide its illegal program of suppressing by federal force constitutionally protected demonstrations in favor of social justice and “black lives matter.” The Project Democracy July 27th news release accompanying the filing of the lawsuit says: Statements from the Trump administration, and the on-the-ground conduct of federal officers, show that the federal government is there to silence protesters, not protect federal property. “Our clients in Portland are peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. Federal law enforcement should not be attacking these brave women for speaking up for what they believe,” said Deana El-Mallawany, counsel at Protect Democracy. “The intent of the administration’s deployment of federal agents in Portland appears to be to stifle speech the president doesn’t like. It’s important to check this unlawful administration policy now, before it is allowed to spread to other cities across the U.S.,” she added. While a U.S. courthouse should never be a rallying point as the opposition to a broad-based movement for social justice and fairness for people of color, it is almost laughable that Trump is presenting the courthouse and its defenders as the victims, under attack by forces of chaos and disorder. He might like voters to think that he is Lincoln defending Fort Sumter from the South Carolina militia firing cannons from Charleston. But unlike Lincoln, and more like George Wallace, Trump is fighting a rearguard action on behalf of an unjust and thus unsustainable status quo. The national interest is having federal power stand by the demonstrators and support them by confronting forces of bigotry, hatred, and violence in this society, including armed right-wing militias. Americans do not want to travel the path of the Weimar Republic, with street battles between the right and left, nor look like apartheid South Africa, breaking up “unlawful assemblies” with indiscriminate and excessive militarized violence. How Trump engineered this appalling reversal of federal symbolism is yet another episode in the continuing tragedy of his administration. (A personal postscript: A year ago, my wife and I took a trip to the West Coast that started in Portland. We drove past the federal courthouse. We walked and drove around the blocks between the courthouse and the river, where a Saturday afternoon market was underway. The major issue then for downtown Portland was how to deal with the problem of homeless encampments and the numbers of homeless people, with attendant problems of sanitation, health, and nutrition. I am sorry to see this lovely city, with vibrant and fun neighborhoods, spectacular parks and views of distant Mount Hood, plunged into agony.) Russell Bikoff has been a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and a federal official in the foreign affairs community and the U.S. Department of Justice. For the past 15 years, he has practiced law in Washington, D.C., focusing on criminal defense, civil litigation, and other civil matters.

By Merrill Lynn Hansen I don't know what they're serving at Rush Limbaugh's house for dinner, but I'm glad I'm not invited. I recently watched a video of a Rush Limbaugh rant about how patriotic Americans should deal with COVID-19. When I'd last heard Rush talk about COVID-19 in March, he said it was just a "common cold" (which is as ridiculous as if I’d said that his lung cancer was just sinus drainage). But, in his July 15th rant, Rush was proclaiming COVID-19 to be America's enemy, and he accused Americans of cowering and being fearful. According to Rush, "So much of the way we are dealing with this [the virus] is unprecedented — and it’s un-American. It’s nothing compared to the way we have overcome enemies and obstacles in our past.” As a shining example of his idea of American courage, Rush referred to the Donner Party, a group of pioneers who in 1847 made the mistake of trying to get to California over the Sierra Nevada mountain range, in the middle of winter. They got stranded and resorted to cannibalism to survive. But, said Rush, "they didn't complain about it, because there was nothing they could do. They had to adapt. This is what’s missing. There seems to be no concept of adaptation." (Rush forgot to mention that the Donner Party got stranded, because they followed the advice of an unscrupulous trail guide, who went on ahead with another party, and promised he would mark the trail for them, and didn't. He didn't even know the trail.) Despite what Rush says, I am an American patriot. But the truth is, I don't adapt well. The Donner Party didn't complain about the weather being cold. They adapted. I always complain when it's cold outside (or when it's hot, raining or snowing). If I were stranded outside with friends in the middle of winter, without any food, unlike the Donner Party, I wouldn't pull out a recipe book to see how to roast them over a campfire and pretend they're some-mores. I would probably complain about being cold and hungry. I might even cry, which according to Rush, is not only unpatriotic, it's wimpy (a liberal thing). But, while Rush might think I'm a liberal wimp, it is my liberal sensibility that makes me certain I would not have trusted an unscrupulous leader who bragged that he was the best trail guide. ("I have the world's greatest memory, and nobody knows this trail better than I do.") I was so surprised about what Rush said, I contacted all two of my Republican friends, who normally embrace Rush's every thought, and repeat them on their Facebook pages and other social networks, as if his words are their own. "So, do you still think TAKING a knee during the National Anthem is un-American?” I asked. "Absolutely,” they both replied. "How about EATING a knee?” I asked. They both stiffened up. "Rush said we should adapt the way the Donner Party adapted --and if we're stranded in this unknown pandemic wilderness, we should do what the Donner party did, and eat each other." Neither of them spoke. In fact, they looked a little queasy. "What's wrong?” I asked. "Not hungry?" Apparently, even Republicans can be wimps. But, Rush, who was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Trump for having said that “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society,” is now the self-proclaimed poster boy for the new American way--the Donner Party way. Rather than advising us how to protect ourselves from unmasked crowds of people spreading a highly contagious and relentless life-threatening disease, Rush wants us to embrace the notion that eating flesh is virtuous and builds good character. He says that "Life has to go on. Life is to be lived” --presumably in-between meals. Merrill Hansen is a legal assistant, living in West Bloomfield, Michigan. She describes herself as a frustrated writer, who wishes she could be Nora Ephron (when she was alive), if only for a day. She is a news-, political- and FB-junkie, a combination that requires a constant reminder that she needs to take deep cleansing breaths when responding to people who don't agree with her.

By Andy Borowitz July 28, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Unveiling a new conspiracy theory, Donald Trump on Tuesday accused Anthony Fauci of using his fifty years of experience as a doctor to win people’s trust. Appearing on Fox News, Trump would not disclose the source of the theory, saying only, “This is something a lot of people are talking about.” “Tony Fauci graduated first in his medical school class, in 1966, because he knew that would make him look good someday,” Trump told Sean Hannity. “He’s been planning this for a long, long time.” Fauci went on to become a leading epidemiologist as part of a carefully plotted scheme to give himself credibility, Trump alleged. “He spent years working on H.I.V., AIDS, Ebola, you name it,” Trump charged. “Anthony Fauci would stop at nothing to make himself look like an expert.” Trump said he was baffled by polls showing that Americans overwhelmingly trust Fauci more than him when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. “There is zero difference between me and Tony Fauci, except for fifty years of so-called medical experience,” he said. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.