J. Patrick Henry

         

 

      Sorry to disappoint you

     Mr. Greenwood, but there have been many times in my life when I was less than proud to be an American. 

 

     Let's look at the top three on the list – in reverse order:

 

    

     3) Henry Kissinger accepts the Noble Peace Prize for negotiating a cease fire in the Viet Nam war after having prolonged said war for years, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.

     2) George W. Bush, after the tragedy of 9/11, uses anti-Muslim sentiment to justify a war against an undersupplied and ill-trained Iraqi Army, one that cost trillions of American dollars and thousands of innocent lives, and that left the Middle East in shambles.

     1) That brings us to now. Pundits will be arguing for weeks about what did or did not go right for the Harris campaign, and how or if Joe Biden's refusal to adhere to his original suggestion that he would be a one term "transitional" President affected her chances. In the end, however, all we can do is look to the majority of Americans who voted for someone morally unfit to hold this or any other office and ask, "Why?".

 

     The best answer I can offer comes from the mouths of two American cultural icons.

 

     First, two quotes from the late H.L. Mencken, columnist with the Baltimore Sun:

     "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

 

     "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
   
     And lastly, from the late P.T. Barnum:
 
     "There's a sucker born every minute."
 
 

 
     Joe Biden's departure from the Presidential campaign, though forced by circumstance was, nonetheless, a courageous act of patriotism, and not to be discounted as anything less.
 
     It brought us a sense of relief and optimism, something we'd lost in the last few months, and set the stage for a new star to rise from the west, someone we knew, but somehow didn't really know.
 
     Kamala Harris was ever present in her role as VP, but barely broke through the consciousness of most of us, even those who understood and supported the significant accomplishments of the Biden Presidency.
 
     Biden managed, despite a divided Congress, to pass legislation that is rebuilding America's infrastructure, while advancing the battle against climate change.
 
     And so it is Kamala, like most citizens a child of immigrants, who now stands before us, asking for the opportunity to serve. And I use that phrase deliberately.
 
     There are many ways of leading, by fiat (as autocrats do), by consensus, by majority rule, by making back room deals, and some, the best, by serving.
 
     A Leader as Servant is a person who does not stand above her followers, but who reaches down and uplifts them, gives them opportunities to succeed, and champions their success when do. Servant leaders focus on creating positive outcomes, not on their reputation, their ego, or the power they legally possess.
 
     I think Kamala Harris is that type of leader, the clear opposite of the former President, whose sense of duty doesn't extend past the end of his own nose.
 
     So, I am both relieved and optimistic for the first time in months. Relieved that Vice President Harris is now the Democratic nominee for President, and optimistic because her performance in that role to date has far exceeded anyone's expectations.
 
     Still, anxiety persists.
 
     Harris is facing an opponent who lacks the barest hint of a moral compass, a man who will do anything—legal or not—to deny her the Presidency, regardless of who the voters have chosen.
 
     He and his cohorts have spent that past three years packing state and county election boards across the country with MAGA devotees who brazenly brag about their intention to break the law by failing to certify the vote whether or not it goes in his favor. Their unstated goal is to delay the counting of electoral votes beyond the legal deadlines so that the race is thrown into the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a significant lead, and are likely to maintain that lead in the new Congress.
 
   How can we, especially those of us New Yorkers, where Harris's electoral victory is assured, make a difference in this battle?
 
    As usual, it comes down to money.
 
     The Harris campaign needs to have enough resources to not only convince American voters to choose her name on the ballot, but more importantly, to pay for the hundreds, if not thousands, of lawyers that will be needed to contest the spurious MAGA certification strategy in multiple courts after the election on November 5th.
 
     To help go to KamalaHarris.com and donate to her campaign. It's a simple process.
 
     Fifty, twenty, even ten dollars helps, because millions of small donors supporting the Democratic ticket will help convince independents that these candidates are worthy of support. Give what you can, and share this message with friends who might be willing to help.
 
     Do it now while you're thinking of it.
 
     And remember, there are other ways to help the fight. If you live in a contested Congressional District, support the Democratic candidate.  The more House seats Democrats win, the better chance Harris will have if the election gets thrown into that snake pit.
    
     The battle is being waged on a variety of fronts and we're determined to defeat Trump.
 
                                 JUST DO IT.   

"I read the news today, oh boy…"

-       John Lennon

 

"There's a bad moon risin'"
-       John Fogarty
 
     Can anyone but a full-throated MAGA maniac take joy in the events of the past two weeks?
 
     First the Republican majority in the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) handed down a decision which eviscerated the Federal Government's ability to ensure that we have clean air, water, food, medicines and safe working conditions.  And they did so by overturning another long standing precedent, something they've had no qualms about doing.
 
    Then, in the ultimate act of legislating from the bench, SCOTUS conferred near total immunity on the office of the President for anything that even smells like an official act (and a lot of the past President's official acts smelled to high heaven). In doing so, they abandoned their slavish devotion to "originalism" and "textualism", coming up with a decision that bore no relation to either the wording of the Constitution, or past history and tradition.  Republican Justices focused on the results of their decision (a vague sense that Presidents need the comfort of immunity to act forcibly), something they claim SCOTUS decisions should never be based upon.
 
     Nothing in the Constitution speaks to Presidential immunity, and history shows that no President has ever expected to be immune from criminal prosecution for things he (still no "she" yet) did while in office. In fact, if this decision had been handed down in 1972, Richard Nixon would have finished out his term. But he didn't. He accepted a pardon, indicating that he clearly understood he could have legally been prosecuted for ordering the FBI to halt an investigation that would have shown he was guilty of obstruction of justice.
 
     The second blast of bad news was there for all to see in real time: President Biden's woeful performance in the debate against Trump.
 
     While Trump threw lie after lie out into the airways ("Even Democrats applauded the overturning of Roe v. Wade"  Really?), Joe just stood there.
 
     In addition to appearing physically weak and sometimes unable to finish a coherent sentence, he didn't once call Trump out on his lies.  Trump continued to throw up softballs that Joe could've knocked out of the park, but he remained silent.
 
     Biden campaign staff and supporters continue to spread the argument that, "This was just one debate. Other candidates -- George Bush in 2000 and Obama in 2011--had lousy first debates, but both came back to win."
 
     The only problem with that position is that, neither Bush nor Obama were in their early 80s, and fighting the notion that they were too old, and perhaps to infirm, to serve four more years in Office.
 
     Well before the debate, polling showed that a majority of the general public thought that Biden was too old to serve out a second term.  And his performance on the debate stage only served to confirm their opinion.  So no, this wasn't a matter of just one bad debate.  It went much deeper.
 
     Reports continue to seep out about Biden's lack of mental acuity during staff meetings, and officials from other nations have remarked about what they saw as a  recent decline in Biden's energy and attention span.

     

     I think that evidence has shown that Joe Biden has been the most effective President in this century, and, arguably, since Clinton was in office. His response to the COVID pandemic, actions he took to increase industrial and technological production in America, and strong steps to begin curtailing the effects of climate change, were major accomplishments, not to be taken lightly.
 
     But this election isn't about the last four years, it's about keeping Trump out of the White House, where he would be a danger to the country, and to democracy around the world.
 
     Sorry to say, but it's clear.  I don't think Biden can defeat Trump, and for the sake of the country, he has to step aside for someone younger.
 
 

     Willie Mays, who was, in my and the opinions of many baseball experts, the greatest player of all time, left us on Tuesday at the age of 93.

     It's interesting to note that every headline announcing his demise referenced not only his baseball talents, but his grace, emphasizing the unique personal qualities he displayed while breaking into a sport that, for a hundred years, only white men were allowed to play.

     He faced numerous racist comments and threats on his life as he entered the major leagues in the early 1950s, but still quickly dominated the game.

     Baseball scouts talk of "five tool players", those who can run, throw, hit for average, hit for power and catch anything that comes their way.

 

     Willie was likely the only SIX TOOL player ever to take the field.

 
     He had those five tools, probably in combination never seen before or since, and then, there was that sixth tool: grace.

 

     Willie did everything on the field with ultra-smooth moves and a love for the game that showed in the perpetual smile he wore during even the toughest of times. 

     You can talk about your Babe Ruth, your Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb (what a piece of human dreck he turned out to be), Rogers Hornsby, and even Barry Bonds (meh), but there may never be another player like Willie Mays. 

     Well…Hank Aaron, the only true home run king of all time, comes in a close second, but he didn't have the speed or defensive gifts that Willie did.

     One need only do an internet search on "Willie Mays – Vic Wertz" to see what everyone considers the greatest catch by a center fielder of all time

    Nope, Willie was the GOAT.  No doubt about it.
 

The Bizarre, Billionaire-Bankrolled

Theory of "Originalism-Textualism"
 
     Conservatives have long complained about so-called liberal Supreme Court Justices "legislating from the bench" by interpreting the Constitution based both upon the words and intent of the Founding Fathers, as well as current realities.

 

     More recently, as conservative Justices appointed by Republican Presidents came into the majority, they've begun to use an analysis method known as "Originalism & Textualism".  The theory claims that, in order to be true to the Constitution, one can consider only two things: the words of the document, and historical practices at the time of its enactment.
     

     As retired Justice Stephen Breyer noted in re: the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade, "The majority's reasoning boiled down to one basic proposition: Because the people who ratified the original Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment did not understand the document to protect reproductive rights, the document could not be read, now, as protecting those rights."

 

     In short, conservative justices insisted that we are bound by decisions made hundreds of years ago by wealthy white men, decisions made when women did not have the right to vote or hold property, let alone the right to control their own bodies.

 

     A current example before the Court illuminates the absurdity of this new approach. It involves a challenge to a state law that made it a crime to deface the serial number on a handgun. The "originalists" will now likely argue that, because there were no serial numbers on muskets when the Second Amendment was passed, it would be unconstitutional to now make it unlawful to deface something that didn't exist two hundred years ago.

 

     As one of the Founding Fathers might say if he were alive today and learned of this new theory,

 

     "Poppycock!"

 

     We're likely to face a similar dispute in relation to IVF (in vetro fertilization) procedures. Because such procedures were not in use during the period the constitution was written (how could they have been?), their use now can in no way be protected by any reading of the Constitution or its Amendments.

 

     As Breyer so astutely noted, the authors of the constitution "understood that they were defining a framework intended to endure and adapt to changing circumstances over hundreds of years. This flexible feature of our Constitution has permitted American society, including the courts, to recognize new facets of the right to liberty and equality that the document protects: the right to contraception, to same-sex intimacy, to interracial marriage, to gay marriage."

 

     Those rights are now in danger of being taken away. Justices Thomas and Alito have set their sights on overturning other past precedents similar to Roe v Wade in order to eliminate the right to make decisions about our most private relationships.

     This new Originalism-Textualism approach to reviewing laws subject to the Constitution is now becoming wide-spread at all levels of the Federal judiciary, fostered by conservative billionaires.

 

     Big money has long pursued a strategy to put more conservatives on the Federal bench by funding organizations like the Federal Society, from whose members Trump selected the last three Supreme Court Justices. They have also tried to influence the Court's decisions by bestowing gifts and cash worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on Justices Thomas and Alito.

 

     Their latest gambit is the sponsorship of so-called Legal Education Conferences, in which Federal judges from all levels are invited to a fancy resort for a week. The morning sessions consist of seminars at which the Originalism-Textualism theory is heavily promoted, and the afternoons are free for the judges to enjoy all of the resort's activities. These conferences cost up to $5,000 per person and, needless to say, the judges don't pay a red cent.

 

     Soon we'll have a judiciary that interprets the Constitution based on cherry-picked history, without consideration of the impact of their decisions on the lives of everyday Americans.
     

     And that historical cherry picking just got easier.

 

     These same moneyed conservatives developed a unique, searchable data base, and are making it available for free to all federal judges. These judges can now use key words to search for historical references that bolster their already decided opinions about how the Constitution should be interpreted.

 

     It becomes clearer every day that American citizens are merely subjects of the best Supreme Court that money can buy.

 

     But wait.

 

     We're not powerless. The upcoming Presidential election is an opportunity to ensure that future Supreme Court nominees are selected based on merit, and not on the preferences of conservative billionaires.

 

     Ordinary Americans are the underdogs in this battle, but we do have one weapon we can use: the vote.
 

 

 

 

Allow me a bit of shameless self-promotion...

 

Dr. Mardy Grothe, a retired psychologist, lifelong bibliophile, and an ardent fan of great opening lines in world literature created a website to honor them. Titled "Great Opening Lines", it is the world's largest online database of literary history's greatest opening words, with 1972 current entries.

Here's a link to it: Great Opening Lines

 

You can search the website by author or title, and entries are sorted by genre: novels, short stories, non-fiction, memoirs, etc.  It's an easy place to get lost in for hours, wandering around, looking for your favorite authors, or simply sampling lines from people you've never heard of.

 

I was fortunate and honored to have the opening line of one of my short stories included on Dr. Grothe's wonderful website.  The story itself, "Syringe",  is availble here in the Works section, and following is the entry that Dr. Grothe wrote to introduce its opening line:

 

 

J. Patrick Henry "Syringe," in The Remembered Arts Journal (June 28, 2016)

     "Freda kept losing her husband."
 

     In five simple words, the goal of all great opening lines is achieved—the reader feels compelled to read on to see where the story is going. In the second paragraph, the narrator continued:

 

     "There were many times when she thought she'd lost him, but he would rally, surprising her and the other family members who, at the urging of his doctor, had joined her at bedside to say goodbye. Freda's emotions were whipsawed by these false alarms to the point where her heart became numb, and the man in the hospital bed, the man she'd met and married thirty-two years before, appeared as if a stranger."

      

     When I learned that the author was alive today because of a lung transplant in 2015, I believed his short story might have autobiographical elements. Henry confirmed my suspicions with this reply to my query:

     

     "The story is a small mystery that centers around a batch of composition notebooks that Freda's late husband used to communicate when on a hospital ventilator or tracheal tube. It was based loosely on my own experience—five months in hospital post-transplant. I still have the seven notebooks I filled during the weeks I couldn't speak."

 
     Seeing one's words in print is a thrill, and having mine appear in the Buffalo News was extra-special.  I saw it as vindication of sorts for a "career" in the newspaper business that has been as checkered as that tablecloth in your favorite Italian restaurant. 
 
     My first foray into the field, delivering the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch at age twelve, was hard work. It was an afternoon paper and mine was a fairly small route (60 customers), but one day a week I had to rise at 4:00 AM to get the Sunday edition on their doorsteps by dawn.  Even worse, when the holiday season came 'round the paper's weight quadrupled with sales inserts.  I did okay in that first job, or at least no harm because, unlike my next employer, the Dispatch is still in business today.
 
     My next job was with the now defunct Buffalo Courier-Express, one I can't claim to have gotten on my own merits—it was due to my high school buddy, Peter Thompson, whose father was head of distribution.  As you may have guessed, I wasn't writing for the paper, I was simply delivering it again, though not door-to-door this time. 
 
   My assignment was as a "hopper", so named because I rode shotgun on the trucks that delivered to stores and individual carriers, and hopped on and off with large bundles of papers.  Loading trucks and tossing around those heavy bundles was hard work, but what really drove me crazy were the hours.  Although the Courier-Express was a morning paper, its first edition actually came out the night before.  Thus, we had to show up at 9:00 PM, load and deliver that first edition, then leave, only to return again at 1:00 AM to deliver the final editions.  That weird split shift, combined with the overnight hours, played havoc with my body clock, and I resigned after only a few weeks on the job.   (Sorry, Pete. Thanks anyway!)
 
     After that last job I avoided the news business until I was a freshman at Niagara University. Feeling oppressed by dorm rules that included mandatory study hours and lights out at 11:00 PM, I put out my own paper—a mimeographed broadsheet titled, "The Underdog"—as a way to voice my discontent. 
 
     Either I was very persuasive or my timing was inordinately lucky, because after only two issues the administration began working to change those rules.  Then, in true oppressor fashion, they co-opted me by giving me a column in the official campus newspaper where, left with nothing much to complain about, I quickly lost my journalistic fervor and walked away.
 
     The lowest point of my newspaper "career" occurred, not because of something I did, but because of something I didn't do.  Right out of college I was working at the now defunct (is there a pattern here?) Circle Art movie house and became acquainted with Anthony Bannon, The Buffalo Evening News' film critic.  Hey, I says to myself, movie reviewing looks easy enough, so I asked him how one went about getting a job with the paper.  He advised me to write to the Managing Editor, which I did, and was soon told that I had an interview scheduled.  Bannon warned me, however, that my letter of introduction included numerous misspellings, a mortal sin in the newspaper business, and that I'd best be prepared for the worst.
 
     On the appointed day I went to the News building and paused outside the area where the interview was to occur.  With my hand on the doorknob I looked through glass at a large, open room.  People were dashing back and forth amidst a haze of cigarette smoke, and I could hear muffled sounds of clacking typewriters and shouted conversations.  It was a Capra-esque scene of barely controlled chaos, typical I suppose of any 1960s, pre-computerized city room, but to me it seemed overwhelming.  Intimidated, I nervously withdrew my hand from the doorknob, silently slipped down the stairs and went out the front door, never to return.
 
     Both the News and I survived my failure of nerve that day. The News, needless to say, is still publishing (though barely), and I went on to a satisfying career in another field. 

 

     Still, after experiencing the gratification of finally seeing my words printed in Buffalo's newspaper of record, I'll always wonder what might have happened had I walked through that door.

 
   "…Good fences make

       good neighbors," 

         - Robert Frost

 
     Mr. Frost had a point, but I suggest from personal experience that he could have added a corollary: "Thin walls make intimate neighbors." 
 
     Allow me to explain.
 
     Camille and I were living in a newly built apartment on Main St. situated directly above the Irish Classical Theatre. While noise from the productions and audiences was never an issue, for some reason the builder neglected to install enough insulation in the walls dividing the apartments. And it didn't take long for us to learn that the wall directly behind our bed separated our bedroom from that of a neighboring couple, one that rarely got along.
 
     As we lay in bed we could hear their arguments coming through loud and clear, making out every spiteful word they snarled at each other.  We could only assume that they heard us just as clearly, so we acted accordingly.
 
     Until one night we, or rather I, didn't.
 
     An elderly friend of ours named Jack, for whom we provided support and personal care, would call us if he was in need of something. Late one night, just as we'd climbed into bed, the phone rang. I picked it up and on the other end of the line was Jack.
 
     Now having a phone conversation with Jack, who could barely hear even with his hearing aids turned up full blast, was always a frustrating task, and this night was no exception.
 
     "I need help, Pat!", he cried into the receiver. " I can't fall asleep.  Can you come over?"
 
     I held the phone out so Camille could hear Jack's shouting, and whispered to her, "I'm not even dressed and he wants me to drive over there. What does he think I can do for him?"
 
      "You've got to go," she whispered back, "he sounds really desperate."
 
     "Okay" I sighed, and put the phone back up to my ear.
 
     "Okay, Jack, I'm coming over," I said.
 
     "What?" he hollered. "What? Are you coming now?  I need help here!"
 
     "Yes, Jack," I repeated, louder this time, "I said ' I'M COMING!'"
 
     "What?"
 
     "I'M COMING, JACK!  I'M COMING!"
 
     Hearing giggling coming from my left, I turned to see Camille with a hand over her mouth trying to stifle her laughter. Oblivious to what she thought was so damned funny, I try one more time, even louder.
 
     "JACK, I'M COMING!  I'M COMING NOW!"
 
     I'm beside myself with frustration. On the one hand I've got a deaf man pleading with me to get dressed and go out in the middle of the night, and on the other, a wife who is snickering at some private joke of which I can only assume I am the butt.
 
     I hang up, turn to her, scowl and say, "What's so fucking funny?"
 
     Without answering, she points to the wall behind the bed, and it dawns on me. Our neighbors have heard my shouting, and have likely come to the conclusion that I must be cheating on my wife with some dude I picked up at the gay bar across the street.
 
     After calming down I did, of course, climb out of bed, get dressed and drive to Jack's apartment. Once there I tried my best to convince him that not only was insomnia common among people of his advanced age, it's also never been known to be fatal. I made him a cup of chamomile tea, wished him well, and headed back home to bed.
 
     While Jack continued to need help at odd hours, I learned to move to another room to take his calls.
 
     And forever after, anytime I shared an elevator with our now, newly intimate neighbors, I would simply nod a greeting, pull my collar up around my chin, and keep my eyes glued to the floor until we came to the bottom and the doors opened.
 

  By Thomas Friedman, NY Times, October 14, 2023: 

 

    With the Middle East on the cusp of a full-blown ground war, I was thinking on Friday morning about how Israel's last two major wars have two very important things in common: They were both started by nonstate actors backed by Iran — Hezbollah from Lebanon in 2006 and Hamas from Gaza now — after Israel had withdrawn from their territories.

     And they both began with bold border-crossing assaults — Hezbollah killing three and kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in 2006 and Hamas brutally killing more than 1,300 and abducting some 150 Israeli civilians, including older people, babies and toddlers, in addition to soldiers.

     That similarity is not a coincidence. Both assaults were designed to challenge emerging trends in the Arab world of accepting Israel's existence in the region.

     And most critically, the result of these surprise, deadly attacks across relatively stable borders was that they drove Israel crazy.
 
     In 2006, Israel essentially responded to Hezbollah: "You think you can just do crazy stuff like kidnap our people and we will treat this as a little border dispute. We may look Western, but the modern Jewish state has survived as 'a villa in the jungle'" — which is how the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak described it — "because if push comes to shove, we are willing to play by the local rules. Have no illusions about that. You will not outcrazy us out of this neighborhood."

     So the Israeli Air Force relentlessly pounded the homes and offices of Hezbollah's leadership in the southern suburbs of Beirut throughout the 34 days of the war, as well as key bridges into and out of the city and Beirut International Airport. Hezbollah's leaders and their families and neighbors paid a very personal price.

     The Israeli response was so ferocious that Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a now famous interview on Aug. 27, 2006, with Lebanon's New TV station, shortly after the war ended: "We did not think, even 1 percent, that the capture [of two Israeli soldiers] would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not."

     Indeed, since 2006, the Israel-Lebanon border has been relatively stable and quiet, with few casualties on both sides. And while Israel did take a hit in terms of its global image because of the carnage it inflicted in Beirut, it was not nearly as isolated in the world or the Middle East over the short term or long run as Hezbollah had hoped.

     Hamas must have missed that lesson when it decided to disrupt the status quo around Gaza with an all-out attack on Israel last weekend. This is in spite of the fact that over the past few years, Israel and Hamas developed a form of coexistence around Gaza that allowed thousands of Gazans to enter Israel daily for work, filled Hamas coffers with cash aid from Qatar and gave Gazans the ability to do business with Israel, with Gazan goods being exported through Israeli seaports and airports.

     Hamas's stated reasons for this war are that Benjamin Netanyahu's government has been provoking the Palestinians by the morning strolls that Israel's minister for national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was taking around Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and by the steps that he was taking to make imprisonment of Palestinians harsher. While these moves by Israel were widely seen as provocations, they are hardly issues that justify Hamas putting all its chips on the table the way it did last Saturday.

     The bigger reason it acted now, which Hamas won't admit, is that it saw how Israel was being more accepted by the Arab world and soon possibly by the birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia. Iran was being cornered by President Biden's Middle East diplomacy, and Palestinians feared being left behind.

     So Hamas essentially said, "OK, Jews, we will go where we have never gone before. We will launch an all-out attack from Gaza that won't stop with soldiers but will murder your grandparents and slaughter your babies. We know it's crazy, but we are willing to risk it to force you to outcrazy us, with the hope that the fires will burn up all Arab-Israeli normalization in the process."

     Yes, if you think Israel is now crazy, it is because Hamas punched it in the face, humiliated it and then poked out one eye. So now Israel believes it must restore its deterrence by proving that it can outcrazy Hamas's latest craziness.

     Israel will apply Hama Rules — a term I coined years ago to describe the strategy deployed in 1982 by Syria's president, Hafez al-Assad, when Hamas's political forefathers, the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, tried to topple Assad's secular regime by starting a rebellion in the city of Hamas.

     Assad pounded the Brotherhood's neighborhoods in Hama relentlessly for days, letting no one out, and brought in bulldozers and leveled it as flat as a parking lot, killing some 20,000 of his own people in the process. I walked on that rubble weeks later. An Arab leader I know told me privately how, afterward, Assad laconically shrugged when he was asked about it: "People live. People die."

     Welcome to the Middle East. This is not like a border dispute between Norway and Sweden or a heated debate in Harvard Yard. Lord, how I wish that it were, but it's not.

     This Israel-Hamas war is part of an evolving escalation of craziness that has been underway in this neighborhood but getting more and more dangerous every year as weapons get bigger, cheaper and more lethal.

     Like Biden, I stand 100 percent with Israel against Hamas, because Israel is an ally that shares many values with America, while Hamas and Iran are opposed to what America stands for. That math is quite simple for me.

     But what makes this war different for me from any war before is Israel's internal politics. In the past nine months, a group of Israeli far-right and ultra-Orthodox politicians led by Netanyahu tried to kidnap Israeli democracy in plain sight. The religious-nationalist-settler right, led by the prime minister, tried to take over Israel's judiciary and other key institutions by eliminating the power of Israel's Supreme Court to exercise judicial review. That attempt opened multiple fractures across Israeli society. Israel was recklessly being taken by its leadership to the brink of a civil war for an ideological flight of fancy. These fractures were seen by Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah and may have stirred their boldness.

     If you want to get just a little feel for those fractures — and the volcanic anger at Netanyahu for the way he divided the country before this war — watch the video that went viral in Israel two days ago when Idit Silman, a minister in Netanyahu's ruling Likud party, was tossed out of the Assaf Harofeh Hospital in Tzrifin when she went to visit some wounded.

     "You've ruined this country. Get out of here," an Israeli doctor yelled at her. "How are you not ashamed to wage another war?" another person told her. "Now it's our turn," the doctor can be heard screaming in a video published on X, formerly known as Twitter, and reported by The Forward.  "We are in charge. We will govern here — right, left, a nation united — without you. You've ruined everything!"

     Israel has suffered a staggering blow and is now forced into a morally impossible war to outcrazy Hamas and deter Iran and Hezbollah at the same time. I weep for the terrible deaths that now await so many good Israelis and Palestinians. And I also worry deeply about the Israeli war plan. It is one thing to deter Hezbollah and deter Hamas. It is quite another to replace Hamas and leave behind something more stable and decent. But what to do?

     Finally, though, just as I stand today with Israel's new unity government in its fight against Hamas to save Israel's body, I will stand after this war with Israel's democracy defenders against those who tried to abduct Israel's soul.
 
 
 

               Nope. It never really left.
 
     

     Moving about the country these days might lead you to believe that COVID is a thing of the past. No more masks, no social distancing, and big crowds everywhere you look. But, unfortunately, COVID remains with us, and continues to plague (sad pun intended) the elderly, organ transplant recipients and others who are significantly immune suppressed.
 
   Here's the long and short of it, albeit in reverse order.
 
   The Short of It:
 
     According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), since the pandemic began in the late winter of 2020, there have been a total of 1.5 million deaths, and 6.4 million hospitalizations due to COVID in the US. And now, by all measures, it appears that COVID infections are on the increase.
 
     Also, as reported by the EPA, hospitalization rates due to COVID hit their bottom in June, 2023 at six thousand/week. Since then, they have tripled, reaching an average of 19 thousand/week.
 
     The highest rates of hospitalization were in the fall & winter of both 2020-21 and 2021- 22, when people spent more time indoors. Thus, it's reasonable to expect that we'll see even higher rates this fall and winter.
 
     Meanwhile, the use of masks has seemingly disappeared, and the rate of vaccinations has dropped from a high of 3 million/day in March, 2021 to a low of 62 thousand/day in May, 2023. This despite the availability of new versions designed to thwart the latest mutations of COVID.
 
     As of today, only 17% of us have received a new bi-valent vaccine. Although the figure is higher (43%) among those older than 65, this percentage may or may not be high enough to protect vulnerable populations against an outbreak this coming winter season.
 
    The Long of It:
 
     Many believe that once you've contracted COVID, you're home free—that is, you can't get it a second time, and your complete recovery is assured. Neither assumption is true, even for those who are up to date on their vaccinations.
 
     According to a February 15, 2023 article in  "Scientific American", a team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis concluded that reinfected people are twice as likely to die and three times as likely to be hospitalized with COVID than those infected only once, regardless of their vaccination status.
 
    Their data, drawn from from half a million COVID patients treated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, showed that 10% had been infected with COVID between two and four times. And some patients continued to have symptoms during the six months of follow-up, what scientists have come to term, "Long COVID."
 
     The most commonly reported symptoms of Long COVID include:

        -       Fatigue
        -       Symptoms that get worse after physical or mental effort
        -       Fever
        -       Respiratory symptoms, including difficulty breathing, shortness of breath and cough
 
     The prevalence of Long COVID in my area (Western New York) has been such that the University of Buffalo's Internal Medicine Dept recently opened a special "Long COVID Treatment Center". Funded by a grant from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, with support from UB, the center is accepting all patients, regardless of whether they have insurance.

    So, What's To Be Done?

     The appropriate responses to a heightened threat from COVID are simple things we all know: mask up, social distance where possible, and, with your  physician's permission, get any dose of an updated COVID vaccine as soon as it become available.

     COVID will continue to mutate, and it's up to us to protect ourselves and our loved ones by doing what we can to ward off these latest variants.