UPDATE: Closed and cancelled are words of the day as coronavirus panic intensifies

ONLY THE ESSENTIALS: In response to the coronavirus, the food court at the Costco Business Center was closed. A favorite item was the 18-inch pizza with vegetables for $9.95.

Toilet paper sells out because

 people "are scared shitless"

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Public schools were closed on Friday out of "abundance of caution" as more cases of the coronavirus were reported in Bergen County, the most populous of New Jersey's 21 counties.

So, we made a small list and my wife, who didn't have to report to work as a school-crossing guard, drove over to the Costco Business Center for a handful of items, including bottled spring water and toilet paper.

Meanwhile, I dressed for my usual 4-hour stint on Fridays as a volunteer at a nearby hospital.

When my wife got to Costco, she couldn't find any shopping carts outside or in the lobby. She entered the warehouse, only to find it packed with shoppers.

She seemed to be saying the panic buying was even worse than what I encountered when I made a video on March 7:

See: Panic buying at the Costco Business Center

 in the time of the coronavirus

She saw other shoppers without a cart following those with a cart to their vehicles so they could take the cart from them, enter the warehouse and shop.

She returned on Saturday, but the warehouse still was out of toilet paper and bottled spring water.

I shopped today at Aldi in Hackensack and the Super H Mart in Ridgefield, N.J.

See: Coronavirus Food Shopping:

 Did H Mart suspend free food samples?

Volunteer office closed

Meanwhile, I went to Lowes in Paramus, N.J., on Friday to discuss a fence project for our home, then set out for the hospital where I have been volunteering twice a week since March 2012.

As I was leaving Lowes, I went to see if the store had any toilet paper (the shelf was empty), then stopped to ask a cashier if more was due to come in.

She asked, as have many people, why people are buying so much toilet paper, and I related a joke I heard from satirist Bill Maher last Friday night:

"[Toilet paper is] the first thing that sells out  because people are scared shitless.

"There's even a new song about it by that new band, 'Panic at Costco,'" Maher cracked.

As I was driving on Cedar Lane in Teaneck, I got a call from the hospital informing me that so few volunteers showed up on Friday the volunteer office would be closing.

I went in on Wednesday, and got a good workout pushing patients in wheelchairs, fetching blood from the Blood Bank and taking specimens to the lab.

No patient visits

But on Wednesday, because of the coronavirus, I wasn't able to visit any patients recovering from open-heart surgery, as I've done as a member of the hospital's Visiting Hearts program since March 2012.

I joined the volunteer program after recovering from my own open-heart surgery for a new aortic valve in September 2011.

National emergency

President Trump declared a national emergency on Friday, two days after a confused and confusing televised speech in which he mistakenly said no goods from Europe would be allowed into the United States.

The president's initial response minimizing the virus, also known as COVID-19, and his many lies and false statements caused the stock market to tank and oil prices to drop.

The Nov. 3 presidential election can't come soon enough for millions of Americans who have seen the nation torn apart by Trump's racism, praise of white supremacists and tax cuts for the 1%.

Meanwhile, for the second year in a row, New Jersey homeowners like me are only able to deduct $10,000 of their property taxes from what's due the federal government (that's only half my yearly bill).

Read: During pandemic, try to laugh 

to keep from crying

Read: So how am I supposed to get any exercise?

Cartoons speak for themselves on Trump's racist campaign to demonize immigrants

Many observers equate President Trump's racial views with Hitler or the Ku Klux Klan. Here, Cartoonist Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo (N.Y.) News agrees Trump doesn't have "a" racist bone in his body; he has dozens of racist bones, one shaped like the hood of the ghostly Klan outfit.

Cartoonist Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio shows sewage flowing out of Trump's mouth. The manhole cover is labeled "Racism."

Cartoonist Dave Granlund of PoliticalCartoons.com has Trump complaining about his treatment after he makes racist remarks. "Hey, there are others who agree with me," the president says, throwing his arms around Hitler and a Klansman.

Jimmy Margolies, former editorial cartoonist for The Record of Woodland Park, shows Trump in a Klan outfit saying, "I could lynch somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters..."

A second cartoon from Adam Zyglis labels as "vintage racism" Trump's words to four women of color in the House of Representatives: "Go back to where you came from!!"

In another cartoon from Dave Granlund, the ICE roundup announced by Trump ensnares Melania Knauss, his wife, for green card violations and illegal employment.

News media finally admit role as Trump's accomplice before and after 2016 election

Freelancer Milt Priggee of PoliticalCartoons.com and other editorial cartoonists have treated Donald J. Trump far more harshly than newspaper, TV and radio reporters. Here, Priggee shows two migrant children impaled on Trump's Statue of Liberty crown, basically calling the president a murderer.

Cartoonist Bill Day labels Trump's claim of a crisis or emergency at our southern border just another lie.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- The New York Times is the first major news organization to concede the media acted as Donald J. Trump's willing accomplice during the 2016 presidential campaign.

On the cover of last Sunday's Opinion section, Frank Bruni's byline appears over these headlines:

Will the Media

Be Trump's

Accomplice 

Again?

We have a second chance in 2020.

Let's not blow it.

Bruni questions the degree to which the media will "let him [President Trump] set the terms of the 2020 presidential campaign, about our appetite for antics [such as Trump's frequent insults] versus substance, and whether we'll repeat the mistakes that we made in 2016 and continued to make during the first stages of presidency. There were plenty."

2015 and 2016

In 2015, when the New York developer declared his candidacy, "the number of stories about Trump in the country's most influential newspapers and on its principal newscasts significantly exceeded what his support in the polls at the time justified," said Bruni, quoting Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

"The volume and tone of the coverage helped propel Trump to the top of Republican polls," wrote the center's Thomas Patterson.

"In stark contrast," Bruni said, "stories about Hillary Clinton in 2015 were mostly negative."

In the first half of 2016, Trump commanded much more coverage that any other candidate from either party, and it was evenly balanced between positive and negative appraisals -- "unlike the coverage of Clinton, which remained mostly negative," Bruni said.

Only during their general election face-off, "on topics relating to the candidates' fitness for office, Clinton and Trump's coverage were virtually identical in terms of its negative tone," Patterson wrote.

"'Regarding their fitness for office, they were treated identically?' In retrospect, that's madness. It should have been in real time, too," Bruni concludes.

And at another point, he notes "The president doesn't hate journalists, not at all. He uses us."

Read: Will the Media Fail Again?

Endless lies

Although The Times and the Washington Posts have led the media in fact-checking every Trump statement and claim, both have been reluctant to label them as lies, preferring "false and misleading claims" and similarly weak language.

And no White House reporter has told Trump to his face, "Please stop lying to the American people."

Instead, most have knocked themselves out to be first to send his endless lies around the nation and world in yet another one of those maddening sound bites.

Bruni's opinion piece in The Times followed by one week "The People vs. Donald Trump," David Leonhardt's argument that "the United States has never had a president as demonstrably unfit for office as Trump," and he should be removed from office.

Jimmy Margulies, former editorial cartoonist for The Record of Woodland Park, notes furloughed government workers support the wall, "if it keeps out bill collectors."

Cartoonist Christopher Weyant of the Boston Globe also invokes the con job of a crisis on our southern border. Here, Trump is nothing less than a con artist.

A sex predator in the White House is OK, but the jury still is out on Brett Kavanaugh

Cartoonist Kevin Siers of The Charlotte Observer shows Republicans drinking from Donald J. Trump's libation, and saying, "If these women were so worried about being attacked, why did they show up to our party?"

Cartoonist David Fitzsimmons of The Arizona Daily Star didn't take sides after the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fitzsimmons says, "And the victim is ....?"

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Many Americans are having second thoughts about supporting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after the judge showed a total lack of judicial temperament and claimed to  be a victim of a left-wing conspiracy.

Meanwhile, when President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly his administration has accomplished more than any other in history, 100 world leader, their ministers and ambassadors laughed, interrupting his speech.

Another chaotic week exposed an all-out partisan war over allegations Kavanaugh, described as falling down drunk, tried to rape a 15-year-old girl during a gathering in 1982, when he was attending a Catholic high school. 

Still, Republican senators agreed to postpone a vote in the Senate to approve his nomination to the nation's highest court to allow the FBI to question others who were at the gathering.

Trump, the sex predator in the White House, gave the FBI a week to interview those named by Christine Blasey Ford, who alleged Kavanaugh tried to rape her.

Her powerful testimony at a Senate hearing -- and Kavanaugh's tearful, angry rebuttal and claim "the Clintons" were taking revenge on him -- kept millions riveted to their TVs on Thursday. 

Cartoonist Bruce Plante of the Tulsa World called Christine Blasey Ford "courageous."

The Record calls Trump tweets stressful, but week-long series fails to look inward

Costa Rican cartoonist Arcadio Esquivel commenting on Russian Dictator and Syrian War Criminal Vladimir Putin's latest stunt -- claiming his new "invincible" missile can pierce U.S. defenses. President Trump didn't comment directly on the assertion by his BFF.

White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, a former model, is leaving after testifying she told "white lies" for Trump, including "Your hands are so big and strong," "Your tweeting is bringing the country together" and "You are making America great again," says cartoonist John Darkow of the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune.

 -- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

The Record's weeklong series -- "EVERYBODY IS EXHAUSTED" -- identifies the "non-stop barrage of Presidential tweets" as among the chief causes of "why we're stressed."

"The chaos of life and its collision with technology and tragedy has more of us feeling drained, frazzled and emotionally overrun," Staff Writer Jim Beckerman wrote on Page 1 a week ago.

The series in my local daily newspaper examined the causes, and what we can do about it.

"Politics may actually be stressing you out," The Record reported last Sunday in a Better Living cover story appearing under this headline:

"The Trump effect"

A therapist is quoted as saying some of her patients point directly to President Trump as a major cause of their stress.

Often, his tweets are hateful, and they are always filled with lies, yet the news media seem to take delight in repeating them word for word.

#Gannettruinedmypaper

But the Woodland Park daily left enormous holes in this weeklong report: 

For example, the Gannett Co. takeover in July 2016 has played a big role in stressing out readers -- from the widespread layoffs that deprive them of a full local-news report to the $75-a-year hike in 7-day home delivery of the print edition.

Also missing is how The Record reports almost exclusively on political conflict in Trenton and Washington, ignoring issues and what is good for the people, their state and their nation.

Web going dark

Now, Executive Editor Rick Green has informed readers that starting on Tuesday, "only subscribers" will be able to have full access "to our digital content anytime and anywhere."

"We are limiting access to content on our website [New Jersey.com] and apps for people who do not subscribe," said Green, a Gannett goon who showed no hesitation in axing more than 350 staffers at North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record.

Many readers, who are retired, won't miss smartphone alerts telling them NJ Transit trains are delayed or about the usual 45-minute wait at Hudson River tollbooths.

Nor will they miss NorthJersey.com rewrites of CNN bulletins or Breaking News emails from The New York Times.

Web emphasis

The previous owners put into motion the biggest downsizing in the paper's history in 2008.

About a year later, then-Publisher Stephen A. Borg moved The Record and NJMG headquarters to Woodland Park from Hackensack, where the Borg family had prospered for more than 110 years.

Gannett bought the paper from the Borgs in July 2016, and focused most of its resources on redesigning the lame website.

Meanwhile, Gannett editors gutted the staff of the print edition, and reduced the space devoted to local news from the 90 or so towns in the circulation area, as well as closing about 20 NJMG weeklies.

A redesigned NorthJersey.com shut out the mostly older readers of the print edition, many of whom don't use a computer or smartphone, and wouldn't know an app from an appetizer on an early bird menu.

Doblin leaves

Alfred P. Doblin, who was editorial page editor of The Record, left to take a job with New Jersey Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney, says David Wildstein of NewJerseyGlobe.com (yes, that David Wildstein, who was the feds' star witness in the Bridgegate trial).

Meanwhile, NorthJersey.com's Facebook page
has been revised, and readers will no longer be able to post bad "reviews" of the fading daily or complain about not being able to reach anyone to cancel the paper.

See: What the Borgs started at The Record...

See: Readers slam daily as 'junk'

Lindy Washburn

Lindy Washburn, a veteran reporter who survived the layoffs, continues to do meaningful reporting on her medical beat.

Her byline appears today over a Page 1 investigation of deaths at New Jersey surgery centers (includes reporting by Kaiser Health News).

In January, Washburn exposed the nearly 2 times higher risk of death during childbirth of New Jersey moms, compared to those in other parts of the country, and the even higher risk if they are African-American.

Cartoonist Paresh Nath commenting on the many countries that have intervened in the never-ending Syrian civil war, propping up the regime of President Bashar Al Assad, a war criminal who reportedly is using chemical weapons against civilians.

Cartoonist Dave Granlund envisioning the natural evolution of President Trump's call to arm teachers after a former student killed 17 students or staff members at a Florida high school.

Pointing to Trump, Gregory Porter sings, 'Do you remember when love was king?'

Jazz singer-songwriter Gregory Porter, backed by a quintet, at the start of his annual Valentine's Day concert in Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

NEW YORK, N.Y. --  His rich baritone still strong after a 2-hour concert, Gregory Porter sang of a world that isn't divided by fear, hatred and racism:

When love was king
He showed respect for every man
Regardless of their skin or clan
Beside him stood his mighty queen
an equal force wise and keen
He lifted up the underneath
And all his wealth he did bequeath
To those who toiled without a gain
So they would remember his reign.


Porter introduced "When Love Was King," which he wrote, by recalling his meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing St. in London.

She said she loved his version of "Smile" -- a tribute to Nat "King" Cole, a major influence on Porter -- and asked for other songs of his she should listen to.

This is what he said:

When you and "our president" [Donald J. Trump] are sipping cognac together, listen to the words of "When Love Was King."

Once was a kingdom, far far away
Love was the rule of the day
Nothing more, nothing less
Than to give your friend your best.
There's much more story that I could tell
To make the hardest hearts swell

This is the story when love was king.

When love was king, do you remember?
When love was king, when love was king
I remember when love was king.

He ruled the land, with his fist unfurled
With open arms for the world
Of hungry children,  first he'd think
To pull their lives from the brink
When love was king.

As he sang, a woman sitting in our row, on the other side of my wife, said out loud, "Obama, Obama."

Porter received a standing ovation last Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, and many in the audience were overcome with emotion.

Below, see a short video of Porter ending the concert:

Here is a YouTube video of Porter singing "When Love Was King."

Large and small news media are killing us with political conflict, sowing voter apathy

Evangelicals supporting President Trump are relieved the porn star he screwed didn't get pregnant and have an abortion, says Jimmy Margulies, a nationally syndicated cartoonist. On Friday night, satirist Bill Maher noted she was the first porn star paid to keep her mouth closed.

Here, Margulies expresses skepticism about the overweight 71-year-old's clean bill of health, given that the New York billionaire's favorite foods are cheeseburgers, steaks and huge slices of chocolate cake.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

Editor's note: The end of this post has been updated to include mention of a flawed article about Hackensack that ran in The New York Times' Real Estate section.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

For as long as I can remember, the most overused words in news media coverage of government are "Republican" and "Democrat."

The media know partisan conflict makes headlines, and there is nothing more infuriating than those TV sound bites from President Trump, Mitch McConnell and Democratic leaders.

Newspapers and TV anchors reduced to a blame game the chaotic government shutdown on the first anniversary of Trump's inauguration as the illegitimate president.

Saturday's Page 1 headline in The Record, the Gannett-owned local daily newspaper, couldn't be clearer:

"CONGRESS

"Midnight deadline passes

after Democrats block

GOP's stopgap plan"

The media -- large and small -- seem incapable of covering government by discussing issues, and taking a stand on what is good for the nation, New Jersey and their people.

And the relentless focus on partisan politics causes widespread voter apathy; tens of millions of Americans, many of them Democrats, simply don't vote, which is how the Liar-In-Chief got into office in the first place.

Coal and fish

The other night, I watched Major Garrett, White House correspondent for CBS News, struck dumb when Trump's environmental protection administrator said he refuses to favor renewable solar and wind energy over other forms, including coal.

Garrett could have pointed out that emissions from coal generating plants kill people prematurely or that they are linked to mercury in fish, but didn't.

What would EPA Czar Scott Pruitt say to that? I guess we'll never know.

Governor Murphy

Phil Murphy was sworn in as New Jersey's 56th governor last Tuesday.

But by Thursday, his pledge to raise the minimum wage to $15, and his executive order tightening rules on disclosing gifts weren't considered front-page news in The Record.

In fact, the Woodland Park daily has been running a series of news stories and columns suggesting Murphy might be "too liberal" for New Jersey -- echoing the lie-filled gubernatorial campaign of Kim Guadagno, who was lieutenant governor under Chris Christie, the worst governor in state history.

And The Record, often referred to as The Wretched, ignored Governor Murphy's non-partisan tweet on inauguration day:

Governor Phil Murphy‏Verified account @GovMurphy Jan 16

I urge you to join us on the road forward. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or an independent. We all share a common destiny. We must undertake a common cause. #NewDayNJ

39 replies 46 retweets 229 likes

 

Tarnished, not golden

Take a look at today's Opinion page (1O), which is dominated by a guest columnist, Carl Golden, who claims: 

"One essential truth emerged from Gov. Phil Murphy's inaugural address on Tuesday: It will be a metaphysical impossibility to get to his left. New Jersey has not been governed in modern history by a chief executive so unabashedly and unapologetically left of center."

Golden is a onetime Record reporter who went on to become chief spokesman for two of New Jersey's most conservative governors, Tom Kean and the other Christie -- Christie Whitman -- so the column about Murphy, a Democrat, is no surprise.

And The Record takes pains to hide Golden's conservative past by identifying him at the end of the column only as "a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University" (4O).

Golden; Charles Stile, The Record's political columnist; and Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi, who was assigned to cover Murphy after years of covering Christie, know "left" and "liberal" are loaded descriptions for progressive Democrats like Murphy.

They seem only interested in creating conflict and making headlines in their coverage of the new governor -- lots of heat, but no light. 

Food coverage?

The Record's Better Living cover today claims "one of the season's best dining deals" is Hudson Restaurant Week (Jan. 22-Feb. 2), when restaurants offer three-course lunches and dinners "for $40 and under."

But there is no mention that a far better deal can be found across the Hudson during New York City's Restaurant Week (Jan. 22-Feb. 9), when hundreds of restaurants offer three-course lunches for $29 and three-course dinners for $42.

Saturday's Better Living cover purported to report on the top cheese shops in North Jersey, but Food Editor Esther Davidowitz somehow omitted the incredible selection of cheeses -- as well as free samples -- at  Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood.

Taxing hospital

Friday's Record brought some good news for home and business owners in Hackensack, where property taxes are unusually high because of all the tax-exempt property located in the city of 45,000.

The City Council is renewing its attempt to get one those non-profits, Hackensack University Medical Center, to "pay some of the estimated $19 million" in taxes it would owe every year, if HUMC wasn't tax exempt, The Record reported.

In a 2015 settlement, the hospital agreed to pay Hackensack $4.5 million over three years, resolving several issues, including tax appeals on four hospital properties.

Upbeat article

Many Hackensack residents were pleased last week after The New York Times published an upbeat profile of the city under this headline:

Hackensack, N.J.: Small, Ethnically Diverse and Affordable

But in the comments section, others noted flaws in the piece, including absolutely no mention of the high property taxes home and business owners pay to make up for the tens of millions of dollars in revenue withheld by such non-profits as Hackensack University Medical Center.

That omission was especially glaring because the article was published in The Times' Real Estate section.

Noisy jets

There also was no mention of the biggest quality of life issue: 

Endless noise from the business and celebrity jets at Teterboro Airport that pass over the Fairmount section and Prospect Avenue high-rises.

The article was written by Jay Levin, a reporter at The Record who was laid off last year.

Levin spent many years crafting expanded obituaries of prominent local residents, but his flawed Hackensack article shows he may be out of practice writing about the living.