Can we please stop talking about lockdowns? A national lockdown is not going to happen in the United States. Every time it’s brought up, it distracts attention from practical public health measures that can work to control covid-19.

California Governor Gavin Newsom even issued orders on how to celebrate Thanksgiving with no singing, no laughing, and no more than ten people at the table. Who thinks of these unrealistic edicts? Much more worrisome is the discussion from the transition team of Joe Biden over a national lockdown that could last several weeks.

Multiple public health experts that have been appointed to President-elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board have said he is not in favor of a nationwide lockdown. “We are not in support of a nationwide lockdown and believe … there simply isn’t a scenario because we can get this under control,” Atul Gawande, a member of Biden’s board, told ABC News’ “This Week.” on Nov. 15.

The blatant hypocrisy of politicians and policymakers goes far beyond the idea that they don’t care about you. They think they don’t have to abide by the rules they demand everyone else submits to because they think that their convenience is more important than everyone else’s livelihoods.

Newsom has consistently heeded guidance from public health officials and researchers to create necessary, if unpopular, rules to limit the spread of the coronavirus in the state… it may be hard for him to make up the lost moral high ground when he next preaches personal responsibility.

The photos, taken by another dinner patron and obtained by Fox LA, show Newsom sitting at a round table for 12 in a dining room that is enclosed on three sides and covered. In his Monday apology for attending the dinner, Newsom stressed repeatedly that the event was outdoors, a qualifier that in the pandemic era implies safer conditions due to natural air circulation that reduces transmission.

For two weeks, Democrats have been arguing over why they didn’t do better in the election. Was it socialism? The Green New Deal? Bad organizing online? These disputes will rage on. But there’s one lesson on which all sides should agree, because the evidence is clear, and the remedy is semantic: Stop saying “Defund the police.”

Democrats have an uphill battle to take the U.S. Senate — pending two Georgia run-offs — and suffered shocking setbacks in the House that drastically diminished their majority.

All over the map, Democrats got hammered on defunding the police, which couldn’t have been better designed to extract maximum political pain with zero upside.

There is no hard evidence that voters turned against Democratic congressional candidates because of “defund the police” and other radical slogans. It does not show up in the congressional generic ballot — there is no decline that corresponds with the unrest of the summer — and there’s little other data to support the idea of a direct causal relationship between the slogans and the performance of Democratic candidates.

President Trump is ending 2020 the same way he began this awful year — by ratcheting up the possibility of a stupid and unnecessary war with Iran.

That Trump would even be considering such action is surprising. Any military action by the United States would also likely make Iran more reluctant to entertain the restraints on nuclear weapon development in the Obama-era pact known as the JCPOA.

It’s likely that the US and Israel have something up their sleeves that can’t be revealed. A recent report in The New York Times that Israel in August killed al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, who was based in Iran, is a reminder that there are always things happening behind the scenes when it comes to Israeli and American efforts to curb the threat from Iran.

If, as many expect, Netanyahu’s government collapses soon and Israel heads for yet another election, he will not be able to flaunt photos of himself with Trump to prove his diplomatic acumen.

But with Trump headed out of office and Republican power thus greatly reduced, Netanyahu is suddenly having to reckon with American skeptics and foes rather than the most compliant of friends.

Netanyahu is the first to be updated about Biden’s attitude toward building in the settlements and in east Jerusalem. What he’s doing now is to maximize his achievements until the last minutes of Trump’s presidency in the White House.”

Like the fact-based historical dramas “Woman in Gold” and “The Monuments Men,” about priceless art treasures stolen by the Nazis, “The Last Vermeer” has a similar motif, but tells a little-known and unexpected story of a Jewish war hero vs. a wily art forger (and possible collaborator) that takes twists and turns on the way to its courtroom conclusion. En route, it explores themes of morality, the value of art, and coping with the ravages of war.

The group— which blends French music with Hebrew and Russian renditions among others— never imagined seven years after their formation that they’d have to adjust their performance style to meet the needs of a computer screen. Kantor said they purposely chose a Zoom format rather than a webinar to see and hear the audiences. Some nights 300 to 400 people tuned in.

After the Arab Spring, when anti-regime protests erupted and ISIS gained a foothold in Northern Syria amid the chaos, a full-scale civil war consumed the country, claiming over half a million lives and displacing millions more. The bloody conflict is the setting for the eight-part Hulu series “No Man’s Land,” which tells the story of a Frenchman (Félix Moati) who travels to Syria in search of his estranged sister, who’s missing and presumed to be dead.