Until They Pass Berniecare... Maybe You Can Try A Healthier Diet

I grew up like everyone else from an American working class background-- eating pretty crappy food-- bacon and eggs for breakfast, ham and cheese for lunch, burgers, meatloaf, pot roast or some other crap for dinner. When I got to college I realized for the first time that there's another way of eating. She didn't consult me, but my girlfriend-- a great cook, was a vegetarian and before I ever made a decision to become one, I was one. After college, when everyone around me in Kabul was getting sick and crapping and puking on themselves, too weak to get up off the floor, I was fit as a fiddle (or as fit as a rubab at least). That's because everyone was eating meat-- those fly-covered carcasses we would see, unrefrigerated, hanging in the markets-- and I was still a vegetarian... and not drinking Coke or Pepsi because I was boycotting them over the massacre at Kent State. I still haven't has a sugary beverage since 1970.

Eventually, I managed to make my way back to Europe, utterly destitute, penniless. I found a macrobiotic restaurant inside the city-owned meditation center and a meal was a buck. And when I ran out of bucks, they hired me to wash dishes. Eventually I would up as the manager. But first, I was a chef. Me-- who had never heated up a pan of water. I learned how to make food, specifically how to make healthy food... how to shop for it, what to avoid, how to cut it and prepare it... everything. So decades later when I went to the hospital to be treated for cancer, my doctor said I was remarkably healthy for a man my age and would probably live through the treatment-- and I passed every physical test they give you before allowing you to get (expensive) experimental treatments. They check every organ in your body because they don't ant to spend a million bucks on you if you're gonna die anyway. So... lucky me that my girlfriend imposed vegetarianism on me.

Yesterday, Newsweek ran a piece, Eating Badly Is A Leading Cause Of Death Worldwide, New Study Shows, that explains how "a long list of benefits is associated with maintaining a nutritious, well-balanced diet, including added energy, weight control and a lower risk of diabetes."

A new study outlines the serious toll that poor nutrition can have on our well-being, and in some cases that even means death. In fact, about one in five deaths around the world in 2016 can be attributed to poor diet, making this one of the biggest killers, according to the study, The Global Burden of Disease.

“In particular, diets low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds, fish oil and high in salt were the most common dietary risk factors,” the research team wrote in its report, published in The Lancet medical journal. “In addition, high blood glucose, high blood pressure, high body mass index [BMI], and high cholesterol were all in the top ten leading risk factors for death for men and women globally.”

All of these factors can be attributed to poor diet, as well as to other causes. Smoking was the only other risk factor to contribute to more deaths, reportedly killing about 7.1 million people in 2016.

“This is really large,” the study's lead author, Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, told The Guardian. “It is amongst the really big problems in the world. It is a cluster that is getting worse.”

The findings also showed that while people are living longer, more years of their lives are spent being sick.

“Death is a powerful motivator, both for individuals and for countries, to address diseases that have been killing us at high rates. But we’ve been much less motivated to address issues leading to illnesses,” Murray told Reuters.

The findings also showed that less than 5 million children under the age 5 died in 2016, compared with more than 16 million in 1970.

“Yet, despite this progress, we are facing a triad of trouble holding back many nations and communities-- obesity, conflict and mental illness, including substance use disorders,” Murray said in a statement.

The IHME study is a collective effort by more than 2,500 researchers who analyzed data from more than 100 countries. Data from some countries are more comprehensive than that from other countries, and therefore the researchers used estimates to fill in missing information. Their findings were published Friday in a series of five papers.

So... unless you're one of those fabulists who think Señor Trumpanzee is going to suddenly embrace BernieCare, it's probably not going to be until 2021-- at the earliest-- that Medicare-For-All is going to pass. Before then, I suggest eating in a more healthy way-- maybe just knocking out refined sugar, probably the single best thing you can do for your health.

And then there's this-- from author Michael Chabon: "Every morning I wake up and in the seconds before I turn my phone on to see what the latest news is, I have this boundless sense of optimism and hope that this is the day that he’s going to have a massive stroke, and, you know, be carted out of the White House on a gurney and every day so far, I have been disappointed in that hope, but, you know, hope springs eternal; he’s an old guy, he doesn’t eat well, he’s overweight, he has terrible nutrition, he doesn’t exercise and it’s not that hard to imagine."

3 Jews React To Trump's Inherent Anti-Semitism: Mnuchin, Cohn, Chabon

Gary Cohn isn't the Wall Street crook with the horrible Marie Antoinette wife... that's Mnuchin. Cohn's the Wall Street crook-- ex-chief operating officer of Golman Sachs-- being buffeted around in such a way that his time as part of the Trumpanzee Regime is probably approaching a... crest. Who think's the Trumpanzee ego is going to be able to handle the unambiguous personal criticism in paragraph two of this?

When Cohn, who had been making over $20 million a year at Goldman, left to join the Trumpanzee Regime, he was given a handsome goodbye gift from his employer: $285 million. Do you think that buys corporate loyalty? No one has mentioned it in the calculus about why he decided to not resign from Trump's anti-Semitic regime. But he doeshave an awful lot of work to do for Goldman from inside the regime. Yesterday, though, Maggie Haberman reported that he had indeed drafted a resignation letter. She cited "two people familiar with the draft" as corroboration of the existence of the letter.

In his first public remarks on the national dialogue about the violence, Mr. Cohn said in an interview on Thursday with the Financial Times, that as a “patriotic American” he did not want to leave his job as the director of the national economic council. “But I also feel compelled to voice my distress over the events of the last two weeks,” Mr. Cohn said.

In the days after the Charlottesville rally, when Mr. Trump defended white nationalist protesters, Jewish members of the administration were mostly silent. Mr. Cohn is so far one of the few in the administration to publicly condemn the president’s remarks. Military leaders posted messages on social media denouncing neo-Nazis and racism, but did not specifically mention the commander in chief. Public deviation from the president by the military is unusual.

Mr. Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides,” as Mr. Cohn stood nearby in the lobby of Trump Tower where the president made his remarks to reporters. After Mr. Trump left, Mr. Cohn stood uncomfortably fielding questions about the president’s statements, and he repeatedly declined to comment. At the time, people close to Mr. Cohn said he was disgusted and deeply upset by Mr. Trump’s comments.

On Thursday, Mr. Cohn spoke publicly for the first time about the issue in the Financial Times interview, which largely focused on tax reform.

“Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the K.K.K.,” Mr. Cohn said. “I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.”

Mr. Cohn added, “As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job.”

Mr. Cohn’s decision to publicly distance himself from the president comes at an awkward time, as Mr. Trump prepares next week to start a major national effort to sell a tax-cut plan, which Mr. Cohn has been toiling for months behind the scenes to craft. The president will travel to Springfield, Mo., to begin that push, a White House official said on Friday, the first of a series of stops around the country to build support for a major tax reduction, which Mr. Trump has vowed to enact this year though he has released few details.

“Starting next week the president’s agenda and calendar is going to revolve around tax reform,” Mr. Cohn said in the interview with the Financial Times.

In the days after the Charlottesville violence, Mr. Cohn’s family-- including his wife-- told him he needed to think seriously about departing, according to two people briefed on the discussions. Several of his friends in the business community also urged him to step away from the administration. Mr. Cohn is a former executive at Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Cohn came close to resigning, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. He met with Mr. Trump privately at the president’s golf club in New Jersey last Friday, scrapping his plans to spend the evening at his second home in the Hamptons.

The markets were spooked last week amid fears that Mr. Cohn would resign, and United States stocks dropped until the White House denied the rumor. Mr. Cohn, who had spent his entire career in the trading world before joining Mr. Trump late last year, was deeply troubled by the market reaction, people close to him said.

Mr. Cohn also told the Financial Times he spoke privately with Mr. Trump about these issues.

“I have not been bashful saying what I think,” Mr. Cohn said.

OK, less bashful than Judas Goat Steve Mnuchin-- the one married to Marie Antoinette-- but probably more a lot more bashful than author Michael Chabon. Last week, Chabon mentioned in an open letter to American Jews that Trumpanzee "has no filter, no self-control, you have told yourself. If he were an anti-Semite--  a Nazi sympathizer, a friend of the Jew-hating Klan--  we would know about it, by now. By now, he would surely have told us. Yesterday, in a long and ragged off-the-cuff address to the press corps, President Trump told us. During a moment that white supremacist godfather Steve Bannon has apparently described as a 'defining' one for this Administration, the President expressed admiration and sympathy for a group of white supremacist demonstrators who marched through the streets of Charlottesville, flaunting Swastikas and openly chanting, along with vile racist slogans, 'Jews will not replace us!' Among those demonstrators, according to Trump, were 'a lot' of 'innocent' and 'very fine people.'" Cohn, who was paid that $285 million to make sure they could count on Cohn when he becomes Fed Chairman, didn't mean he was that not bashful.

Is Señor Trumpanzee An Anti-Semite?

I went to PS 197 and then James Madison High School in a very Jewish part of Brooklyn. And politically, a very liberal part of Brooklyn. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Bernie Sanders grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools. It's still a very Jewish neighborhood... but not as liberal. Russian Jewish immigrants went heavily for Trump in this area and, in fact, Trump beat Hillary in precinct after precinct all over this part of Brooklyn. In an analysis right after the election, the Pew Research Center concluded that, nationally, 71% of Jews backed Hillary-- significantly less than the 78% who turned out for Obama in 2008, the 74% who voted for Kerry in 2004, or the 79% who voted for Gore in 2000, but 71% isn't bad. However, just before the election, the American Jewish Committee published a poll that found around half the Orthodox Jewish registered voters planned to back Trump and just 21% planned to vote for Clinton-- with 15% saying they would abstain.

Thursday, a prominent Jewish author, Pulitzer Prize and Hugo Award winner, Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen's Union), who, 2 months ago enraged conservatives when he was interviewed on the radio and said "Every morning I wake up and in the seconds before I turn my phone on to see what the latest news is, I have this boundless sense of optimism and hope that this is the day that he’s going to have a massive stroke, and, you know, be carted out of the White House on a gurney and every day so far, I have been disappointed in that hope, but, you know, hope springs eternal; he’s an old guy, he doesn’t eat well, he’s overweight, he has terrible nutrition, he doesn’t exercise and it’s not that hard to imagine," penned an open letter to our fellow Jews.

To our fellow Jews, in the United States, in Israel, and around the world:

We know that, up to now, some of you have made an effort to reserve judgment on the question of whether or not President Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, and to give him the benefit of the doubt. Some of you voted for him last November. Some of you have found employment in his service, or have involved yourself with him in private business deals, or in diplomatic ties.

You have counted carefully as each appointment to his administration of a white supremacist, anti-Semite, neo-Nazi or crypto-fascist appeared to be counterbalanced by the appointment of a fellow Jew, and reassured yourself that the most troubling of those hires would be cumulatively outweighed by the presence, in his own family and circle of closest advisors, of a Jewish son-in-law and daughter.

You have given your support to the President’s long and appalling record of racist statements, at worst assenting to them, at best dismissing them as the empty blandishments of a huckster at work, and have chosen to see the warm reception that his rhetoric found among the hood-wearers, weekend stormtroopers, and militias of hate as proof of the gullibility of a bunch of patsies, however distasteful.

You have viewed him as a potential friend to Israel, or a reliable enemy of Israel’s enemies.

You have tried to allay or dismiss your fears with the knowledge that most of the President’s hateful words and actions, along with those of his appointees, have targeted other people--  immigrants, Black people, and Muslims--  taking hollow consolation in how open and shameless his hate has been, as if that openness and shamelessness guaranteed the absence, in his heart and in his administration, of any hidden hatred for us.

The President has no filter, no self-control, you have told yourself. If he were an anti-Semite--  a Nazi sympathizer, a friend of the Jew-hating Klan--  we would know about it, by now. By now, he would surely have told us.

Yesterday, in a long and ragged off-the-cuff address to the press corps, President Trump told us. During a moment that white supremacist godfather Steve Bannon has apparently described as a “defining” one for this Administration, the President expressed admiration and sympathy for a group of white supremacist demonstrators who marched through the streets of Charlottesville, flaunting Swastikas and openly chanting, along with vile racist slogans, “Jews will not replace us!” Among those demonstrators, according to Trump, were “a lot” of “innocent” and “very fine people.”

So, now you know. First he went after immigrants, the poor, Muslims, trans people and people of color, and you did nothing. You contributed to his campaign, you voted for him. You accepted positions on his staff and his councils. You entered into negotiations, cut deals, made contracts with him and his government.

Now he’s coming after you. The question is: what are you going to do about it? If you don’t feel, or can’t show, any concern, pain or understanding for the persecution and demonization of others, at least show a little self-interest. At least show a little sechel. At the very least, show a little self-respect.

To Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, and our other fellow Jews currently serving under this odious regime: We call upon you to resign; and to the President’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen: Fire your client.

To Sheldon Adelson and our other fellow Jews still engaged in making the repugnant calculation that a hater of Arabs must be a lover of Jews, or that money trumps hate, or that a million dollars’ worth of access can protect you from one boot heel at the door: Wise up.

To the government of Israel, and our fellow Jews living there: Wise up.

To Jared Kushner: You have one minute to do whatever it takes to keep the history of your people from looking back on you as among its greatest traitors, and greatest fools; that minute is nearly past. To Ivanka Trump: Allow us to teach you an ancient and venerable phrase, long employed by Jewish parents and children to one another at such moments of family crisis: I’ll sit shiva for you. Try it out on your father; see how it goes.

Among all the bleak and violent truths that found confirmation or came slouching into view amid the torchlight of Charlottesville is this: Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the President, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things.

To our fellow Jews, in North America, in Israel, and around the world: What side are you on?

Meanwhile, Ayoub Kara, the crackpot Druze right-wing Israeli Communications Minister, told the Jerusalem Post and his Jewish countrymen to ignore Trump's flirtation with Nazis because Trump allows Netanyahu to dictate America's Middle East policies. "Due to the terrific relations with the US, we need to put the declarations about the Nazis in the proper proportion... Trump is the best U.S. leader Israel has ever had. His relations with the prime minister of Israel are wonderful, and after enduring the terrible years of Obama, Trump is the unquestioned leader of the free world, and we must not accept anyone harming him."