Progressive officials, but not racist Trump, are targets of news media feeding frenzies

Cartoonist Daryl Cagle has fun with the sensational extortion charges leveled by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos against David Jay Pecker, publisher of the National Inquirer. That's the same rag that paid hush money to a Playboy bunny who allegedly had an affair with Donald J. Trump to boost his chances of victory in the 2016 presidential election. See more at The Cagle Post.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Looking ahead to the 2020 presidential election, do I really care whether Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren passed along family lore about her heritage as fact?

No. But I do care about what Warren will do to re-establish protections for the consumer the Trump administration dismantled, as well as her plans for taxing the rich and universal health care.

But whether Warren actually is a Native America is the subject of a news media feeding frenzy, and I'm sure I will hear about it nearly every day until the election on Nov. 3, 2020.

Another controversy getting intense media attention also involves Democrats, this one focusing on Virginia's governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Suspiciously, the official in line to take over in Richmond -- onetime capital of the Confederacy -- if all three Democrats resign, is a Republican.

Can you imagine how much damage this Republican could do by limiting instead of expanding Medicaid and suppressing voting rights until another gubernatorial election can be held?

Trumps get a pass

Yet, many of these same reporters seem to have forgotten all of President Trump's transgressions and hardly pay any attention to repeated calls for his resignation, impeachment or indictment.

Here is Trump, leader of the so-called free world, who was elected not by popular vote but with the help of a Russian disinformation campaign in the months leading up to the 2016 election.

Since he was sworn in a little over 2 years ago, a traitorous Trump has divided us more than at any time since the Civil War, and nearly every word out of his mouth is a lie.

Tax evasion, racism

He brought to the White House a history of tax evasion and cheating inherited from his father, developer Fred Trump, who denied apartments to blacks and once was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally.

Why aren't the news media focusing on any of this Trump history ad nauseum in the same way we are hearing about Democrats' flaws?

I'm still waiting for a White House reporter -- any reporter-- to confront Trump and ask, "When are you going to stop lying to the American people"

Cheap Aroma rice cooker has me eating my words of praise, Costco wines + more

This Aroma Professional Rice Cooker came with a 5-year warranty, but the appliance started malfunctioning in October, about 2 years after we purchased it at Costco Wholesale in Teterboro for the bargain-basement price of $29.99.

One feature we liked was this collector, which caught condensation from inside the electric cooker. We could remove it to throw the water into the sink.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Forgive the play on words, but I smelled a bargain in October 2015 when I saw an electric rice cooker going for only $29.99 at my Costco Wholesale warehouse.

As I put the box into my shopping cart, my wife's complaints about the slowness of our Panasonic 10-cup Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker rang in my ears.

The Panasonic cooker I got from Amazon.com in April 2013 cost $67.99, but listed for $89.99 -- three times the price of the bargain Aroma Professional Cooker.

But the Aroma cooker, made in China, stopped working in October, two years after I bought it.

So now that I've returned the malfunctioning Aroma cooker to my Teterboro Costco for a full refund, I am ready to eat the words of praise I lavished on it in a post on Do You Really Know What You're Eating?

$29.99 rice cooker is better

 than one costing three times the price

Our Panasonic 10-cup Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker is slower, but has operated flawlessly since we bought it in April 2013.

In October 2015, the 5-year warranty listed on the box hooked me, but to get the cooker repaired or replaced, I would have had to pay for shipping the Aroma cooker both ways to San Diego, Calif., at a cost that would have exceeded the purchase price ($22 each way). 

Cuckoo rice cookers, which are made in South Korea, were on sale at the H Mart in Little Ferry on Sunday.

Our disposable culture

I received several comments in response to my original post on purchasing the cheap rice cooker, and the one from Phoebe Alexis proved prescient.

"The reason why many Asian folks invest in brands like Zojirushi and Tiger is because those rice cookers last! Parts can be replaced!

"We live in a disposable culture and should concentrate more on a few quality products that will LAST.... I seriously doubt that Aroma Cooker can match a Tiger (made in Japan) cooker that will last for years!!!! I appreciate your point of view but am very skeptical."

So, Pheobe, wherever you are, thanks for the valuable lesson in price v. quality or as many say, You get what you pay for.

Cases of wine on display at the Costco Wholesale in the Wayne Towne Center mall (149 Route 23 in Wayne). Unlike the liquor-store concession at the Teterboro warehouse, the Wayne Costco sells private-label wines from California, France, Italy, Argentina and other countries under the Kirkland Signature label.

Kirkland Signature 2014 Meritage from California's Napa Valley is a red wine made from five different grapes, including Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

Best value in wine

Kirkland Signature wines from Costco offer the best value, but in northern New Jersey, only the warehouse in the Wayne Towne Center has a state liquor license to sell them.

One example is the Kirkland Signature 2015 Malbec from Argentina at $6.99, one of the bottles of red wine I picked up last Thursday.

Others included Kirkland Signature 2014 Meritage, $11.59; 2015 Napa County Cabernet Sauvignon, $12.99; and 2016 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, also $12.99.

TY KU Silver Junmai Sake from Japan was $14.99 at the Wayne Costco.

A whole Jamon Serrano from Spain, where it was cured for 14 months, with a stand and slicing knife was $129.99 at the Wayne Costco. The weight was given as 15.43 pounds to 16.53 pounds.

More organics

On a visit to the Teterboro Costco on Saturday, when I replaced a damaged Michelin tire on my car, I noticed more organic products than before.

It's now possible to buy the basics -- bread, dairy or almond milk, eggs, salad mix, coffee beans and many other items -- and choose chemical-free organic over conventionally raised or grown.

This 2-pound, 8-ounce bag of Fair Trade Organic Whole Bean Coffee from Peru is not only free of harmful pesticides and chemical fertilizers, but also is a good deal at $10.99, and I was able to grind it at the Teterboro warehouse, below. 

I use a Turkish grind in my drip coffee maker to expose as much coffee as possible to hot water, producing a more robust cup of Joe.

Other organic coffee beans were available, including these from Mexico.

Plainville Farms Organic Turkey Breast (1.25 pounds for $10.89) may be the only cold cut sold at the Teterboro Costco that wasn't made from poultry or meat raised on harmful human antibiotics.

Pasta Prima Organic Spinach & Cheese Ravioli are delicious cooked, splashed with extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkled with grated cheese. You get 2.25 pounds for $9.99.

My wife says Costco no longer sells Kirkland Signature Whole Grain Bread so she brought home organic loaves, Dave's Killer Bread with 21 whole grains and seeds (two 27-ounce loaves were $7.39; one loaf at the Paramus Target was $5.89). I love this bread toasted, spread with a little pesto or used in a sandwich of reduced-fat Swiss cheese, wild smoked salmon and Campari tomato slices, all available at Costco, below.

I used three spreads on the sandwich: Dijon mustard, red-pepper paste and pesto.

Kirkland Signature Organic Unsweetened Almond Non-Dairy Beverage (Vanilla) may be the substitute for 1% lactose-free milk when having coffee or cereal. Six quarts of the almond milk were $7.99.

I was tempted by these prepared mussels from Canada's Prince Edward Island, but the garlic butter was a turnoff. 

CORRECTION: Here are two organic eggs from Costco with smoked wild salmon and organic quinoa. The photo I posted originally showed two duck eggs from Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff. Two dozen Kirkland Signature Organic Eggs are $5.99 at Costco.

Food shopping: A few good buys at Costco, Whole Foods Market, ShopRite + H Mart

These hothouse-grown Cluster Tomatoes at the Costco Wholesale in Teterboro and the Costco Business Center in Hackensack are from Sunset, and they are sized between the Campari Tomato and the Beefsteak Tomato. A 4-pound box was $5.59 or about $1.40 a pound. I used them in sandwiches and cooking, but for maximum tomato flavor, stick to the pricier Campari Tomato.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Amazon's bid to cut prices and make its Whole Foods Market subsidiary more attractive to budget-conscious food shoppers got off to a slow start.

Last week, though, I was able to pick up organic table grapes, organic carrots, sparkling water and grass-fed leg of lamb from Iceland at great prices.

The butterflied leg of lamb ($7.99 a pound) was from free-range sheep that have been raised on the big North Atlantic island since the year 878.

Whole Foods also is the only supermarket to give you a credit (10 cents) for bringing a reusable bag.

And you can keep up with sales and coupons by downloading the Whole Foods app to your smart phone.

My Whole Foods purchases supplemented others from Costco Wholesale, ShopRite and H Mart in Little Ferry, the three places where we spend most of our food dollars.

Second Nature-brand Naked Medley - GMO-free raisins, whole almonds and cashews with no salt or added oils -- was $7.99 after an instant coupon at the Costco Business Center, 80 S. River St. in Hackensack. That's about 50 cents for each 1.5-ounce bag. The regular price is $9.99.

Organic red or green seedless table grapes were on sale for $1.69 a pound at the Whole Foods Market in Bergen Town Center, Paramus. A-5-pound bag of Organic Carrots was $3.99.

A pack of a dozen 12-ounce cans of 365 Everyday Value Sparkling Water with natural lemon, grapefruit and other flavors was $3 at the Whole Foods in Paramus.

A 2-pound bag of Organic Blue Mussels from Canada was on sale for $4.99 at ShopRite, Forest Avenue and Route 4 in Paramus.

Large Golden Pineapples were on sale at the Paramus ShopRite for $1.99 each last Thursday, and the sale continued today, when I picked up two.

But the Paramus ShopRite was out of 3-pound bags of sweet potatoes last Thursday, so I paid $1.99 a pound for 2 pounds of what were labeled "sweet potatoes" at the Englewood farmers market on Friday. They were twice the price of the ShopRite sweet potatoes and not as sweet after I boiled them with garlic cloves and mashed them with extra-virgin olive oil and seasonings.

Fresh whole, wild-caught Porgy were $2.99 a pound at H Mart, the Korean supermarket at 260 Bergen Turnpike in Little Ferry.

At The Record, more slanted and sloppy reporting on Nov. 7 election, mass transit

In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, left, and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno are going head to head in the Nov. 7 election to replace Governor Christie. Photos: U.S. Department of State and N.J. Governor's Office.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Dustin Racioppi of The Record's State House Bureau must be the last reporter in New Jersey to state flatly that Governor Christie had no "part" in the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal.

In a Page 1 preview of tonight's election debate between Democrat Phil Murphy and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, Racioppi continues his slanted coverage in favor of Guadagno.

"Murphy, who has led the contest in all polls, has recently started tying Guadagno" to the Bridgegate scandal, "even though neither she nor Christie had any part in it," Racioppi claims.

In the court of public opinion, Christie long ago was convicted of masterminding the political-retaliation scheme against Democrats two months before he ran for re-election in 2013.

We still don't know if he was named as one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the indictment of two of his allies, who were convicted, thanks in large part to the testimony of the governor's crony at the Port Authority, which owns and operates the bridge.

And Christie spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds to hire a law firm that issued a widely recognized whitewash of the governor's role.  

Ethanol trains

On Sunday, The Record's transportation reporter alerted readers alarmed over potentially explosive crude-oil trains to another hazard -- rail shipments of flammable ethanol.

But nowhere in the front-page story or on the continuation page did Staff Writer Curtis Tate mention Teaneck, a Bergen County town that has been at the center of the protests after officials learned about oil trains passing through the township.

Amazon bid

On Tuesday, the Woodland Park daily and other news outlets provided major  coverage of Christie's offer of $7 billion in tax incentives to attract Amazon's second headquarters to Newark.

But all of the news outlet failed to mention Newark is a good fit for the e-commerce behemoth, because the city already has an Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market on Broad Street.

Amazon has been cutting prices to make the natural foods supermarket chain more attractive to shoppers.

The Newark store's mission is to improve community and individual health.

Portal bridge

In the past 15 years, the transportation editor, columnist and reporters at The Record have shown an anti-mass transit bias time and again.

No one at the Woodland Park daily has embraced the expansion of mass transit in North Jersey as the only way to cut growing traffic congestion, air pollution and premature deaths from auto emissions.

The editors could be kowtowing to the automakers and auto dealers who buy millions of dollar of advertising every year in The Record and other newspapers.

In a Page 1 story on Saturday, Tate made sure his first paragraph alerted readers to the high expense of replacing the Portal Bridge, a 107-year-old Hackensack River span "that has become a major bottleneck on the nation's busiest commuter corridor."

He reports the $1.5 billion project "could still take decades and tens of billions of dollars to complete, with funding sources yet to be identified."

As Trump destroys our democracy, Page 1 buzzes with bees, sports, truckers in L.A.

STUCK IN HACKENSACK: A tour bus blocked two lanes of River Street today after the back of the vehicle got hung up as it was leaving the parking lot of the shuttered New Jersey Naval Museum and USS Ling, a World War II submarine that is itself stuck in the muck of the Hackensack River.

ABANDONED PLACES: A couple who got off the bus said they were on a tour of "abandoned places," including the submarine. They said the old headquarters of The Record, which the Borg family abandoned in 2009, wasn't part of the tour.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

The Russian election-meddling investigation continues to expand -- even as President Trump calls the actions of his own Justice Department "phony" and "sad."

The Liar-In-Chief also accused Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein of leading a "witch hunt."

Given the non-stop madness, mayhem and alternative facts that have marked the Trump administration since Jan. 20, can a once-respected newspaper like The Record of Woodland Park continue to fill Page 1 with fluff?

Father's Day feature

Today's front page is an emphatic "yes."

There are three major elements, plus a photo referring readers to a heart-warming Father's Day feature about father-son and father-daughter restaurant teams (1A and 1BL).

As our nation's capital burns, Editor Richard A. Green buzzes about the unusually high mortality rate of honeybees in the Garden State.

The Record has never reported in any comprehensive way on heart disease, the nation's No. 1 killer, or the obesity epidemic.

Instead, Green and other editors prefer medical miracles or, as in the case of today's Page 1 sports column, a medical freak -- a retired coach with "idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis," an incurable disease.

Inexplicably, the third major story on Page 1 today focuses on a truck driver in the port of Los Angeles who takes home "as little as 67 cents a week," according to a USA Today investigation.

A story reporting Trump's tax-overhaul plan "is on life support" appears on Page 4A.

'National nightmare'

Way back on the Opinion section front, Columnist Mike Kelly says, "The national nightmare has struck the national pastime," an awkward reference to last week's shooting of a GOP congressman on a baseball practice field.

Why didn't Green -- who laid off more than 350 employees but spared Kelly and other veteran columnists -- run this gun-control column on Page 1?

Just the day before, Kelly's column demonizing Cuba for giving asylum to the killer of a New Jersey state trooper ran at the top of Page 1.

ON BORG-OWNED PROPERTY? When the Borg family of Englewood, Tenafly, Manhattan and the Hamptons sold North Jersey Media Group to Gannett Co. for more than $40 million last July, they retained nearly 20 acres along River Street in Hackensack to develop into apartments. The Borgs dispute the USS Ling is on their property, and a $1-year-lease was terminated in May 2016 by then-Record Publisher Stephen A Borg. The family claims the sub is stuck in the river, which they don't own.

TAKING A BREAK: Members of the tour group purchased food at the New Heritage Diner, and took shelter under a tree as they awaited the arrival of a heavy duty tow truck to free the bus.

Grocery 'earthquake'?

This morning, I braved the parking-lot puddles and potholes to go shopping for fresh fish, fruit, rice and other items at the H Mart in Little Ferry.

But I didn't see any signs of the "earthquake rattling through the grocery sector" predicted by an analyst in The Record on Saturday.

In a front-page story, the paper's retailing reporter claimed "traditional supermarkets" have a big reason to worry now that Amazon is expected to merge with Whole Foods Market, the dominant player in organic and natural food.

At the Korean supermarket, some of the prices were so low I can't imagine how Whole Foods or Amazon's online grocery service could possibly match them.

A 15-pound bag of Kokuho Yellow Label California-grown white rice was only $6.99, whole fresh wild-caught porgy were $1.99 a pound, and five bunches of scallions were 99 cents.

I munched my way around the store with free samples of fish cake, tofu, noodles, broiled fresh cod, fried mussels, sliced boiled octopus and other Korean food.

Try that at Whole Foods.

Do we need a bunch of big new supermarkets?

A virus is killing farmed tilapia

A box of 14 to 16 achingly sweet Ataulfo or Champagne Mangoes was $9.99 today at H Mart, 260 Bergen Turnpike, Little Ferry.