media news

Trump vs. Media battle rages on … and on

Donald J. Trump in one important way is no different from the 44 men who preceded him as president of the United States of America.

They all disliked, distrusted and at times disrespected the media.

The difference between Trump and those other guys is the tone and tenor of the response he levels at the media for doing their job.

Trump has branded all media that report stories that aren’t totally favorable as “fake news.” Moreover, he is making admittedly superb use of social media to carry that message forward. Beyond that, his base is loving it! The folks who voted for him and who bought into his “tell it like it is” mantra continue to give him a baseline of support that barely creaks under the weight of the negativity that the president heaps onto himself.

Is this guy, though, any different from his predecessors in his dislike of the media? Nope. Not at all.

Trump assails media again

Every single predecessor — certainly those who served as president during the past 60 or 70 years — have griped openly about the coverage the media provided. Even when they complained, though, many of them did so with a smile/smirk on their face. I believe it was President Franklin Roosevelt who referred to the media’s coverage of his dog Fala, noting how reporters should lay off the presidential pooch.

On and one it has gone.

Do you think President Kennedy wanted the media to cover the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the manner that they did? Of course not. He took the criticism like a man.

President Johnson didn’t much care for the media’s coverage of the Vietnam War, either. He understood the role of a free press and accepted it as part of the job he inherited when his predecessor was gunned down.

I don’t recall hearing President Reagan bitching loudly about the coverage of the Iran-contra controversy.

President Clinton was bombarded with negativity during his eight years in the White House. His wife was a frequent target, too. And occasionally, the media actually poked maliciously at their daughter, for crying out loud.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama also took their share of hits over the course of their combined 16 years in office. And, by the way, President Obama was the victim of actual “fake news” promulgated by the likes of, oh, Donald J. Trump — the originator of the lie he kept telling that Obama was constitutionally ineligible to serve because he was born in a far-off land. Can there be a greater example of presidential hypocrisy than that?

The rules of president-media engagement have changed in the Age of Trump. The media are doing the job the U.S. Constitution allows them to do. The president doesn’t like what they report, so he — in effect — defames reporters and editors for serving the public interest.

Worst of all? The complainer in chief  is getting away with it!

local news, Sports news

Let’s still call it an ‘MPEV’

I get scolded from time to time by readers of this blog. One of them scolded me mildly because I keep referring to the still-to-be-built sports and entertainment facility as a “multipurpose event venue.”

He wants the upcoming downtown Amarillo site called a “ballpark.”

I believe I’ll take his suggestion/edict under advisement, but for now I’ll continue to use the MPEV reference.

The MPEV is going to be home to a AA minor-league baseball franchise. The city recently announced the relocation of that franchise from San Antonio to Amarillo. The San Antonio Missions — as the team is now called — plan to play ball in Amarillo beginning in April 2019, which means the planners here need to get cracking. They need design plans approved and construction to begin immediately … if not sooner.

The strategy, though, puts many other events in the MPEV. Plans call for the venue to play host to myriad other activities that have nothing to do with balls and strikes, home runs, hot dogs and beer. Yes, the baseball team will be the primary tenant of the MPEV, but not the only one — if the grand plan is developed fully.

Thus, MPEV remains to my way of thinking a suitable term of art to refer to this upcoming venue.

I always appreciate constructive criticism.

For now I’ll pass on the latest suggestion on how we ought to refer to the MPEV.

medical news, national news, political news

Now the economists weigh in: GOP health care overhaul stinks

I suppose politicians are predisposed to think more highly of their own opinions and agendas than anyone else’s.

How else does one explain Senate Republicans’ stubborn insistence that their version of an overhaul of the nation’s health care insurance system is good while actual experts say it’s bad?

The Congressional Budget Office, the famously non-partisan agency charged with “scoring” legislation, has said the GOP plan would cost 22 million Americans their health insurance over the next decade.

Now we hear from some Nobel Prize laureates, economists with a proven track record of expertise and knowledge about such matters, saying the GOP bill is bad news for Americans.

Not to be derailed or dissuaded, the Senate Republican leadership is going to trudge ahead with a vote — possibly as early as Thursday — on this so-called alternative to the Affordable Care Act.

I’ll call it Trumpcare, named after the president of the United States. I have refused to refer to the ACA by its more colloquial term named after former President Barack Obama; that’s just me, though, and my bias speaking out loud.

Trumpcare is a turkey, according to the Nobel laureates.

Here’s how The Hill reports on it.

According to The Hill: “We call on Congress to work on legislation to improve the health delivery system, in general, and The Affordable Care Act, in particular,” the economists wrote. “The goal should be to hold down health costs and increase access to affordable, quality health coverage for all.”

The plan under consideration doesn’t do any of that. It also makes dramatic cuts in Medicaid insurance, upon which millions of Americans depend because they cannot afford to pay the full freight for health insurance.

The Senate plan has made conservatives angry because it doesn’t go far enough in repealing the ACA. It makes GOP moderates angry because it is every bit as “mean” — to borrow a term used by the president — as the plan that House members approved by a narrow 217-213 vote.

Nobel laureate economists dislike it, too, as do apparently millions of just plain average Americans who are worried about what it will do to their insurance plans.

The only folks who like it are the 13 Republican U.S. senators who cobbled this legislation together.

Are these men the only people in America who have it right, that everyone else is wrong? I think not.

national news

More defamation is coming from Trump

My vertigo is getting serious as I listen to Donald J. Trump’s latest 180-degree pivot on that so-called “Russia thing.”

The man who has called the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election a “hoax” and a product of “fake news” now has defamed his immediate predecessor — again!

Trump says Barack H. Obama “colluded” with Russians to influence the election. He says Hillary Clinton did, too.

This man, the president, make no sense … at all! None. He blathers, bloviates and blusters about this and that. He cannot differentiate between fact and fiction. He has just promulgated another fictitious story line — a lie, if you will — about President Obama.

Trump seemed to dovetail from a Washington Post story that details in tremendous detail about the Obama administration’s struggle to deal with Russian hacking in advance of this past year’s election. Then he went further, suggesting that Obama’s flinching on action against Russia means he colluded with them.

How does this make sense? U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia sought to influence the election to favor Trump. He now seems to suggest that Obama worked with the Russians to elect the fellow who was running against Obama’s preferred candidate: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Here is what Trump tweeted:

“The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win and did not want to ‘rock the boat,'” Trump wrote before 9 a.m. in Washington. “He didn’t ‘choke,’ he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good.”Source: http://us.pressfrom.com/news/politics/-62484-trump-blames-obama-for-russia-once-again/

This crap comes from the president of the United States, our head of state, our commander in chief? Oh, brother.

I need to sit down.

medical news, national news, political news

CBO verdict is in: health care bill is ‘mean’

The Congressional Budget Office doesn’t use language such as “mean” to assess its analysis of legislation, but that’s what one can surmise of its latest analysis of a key Senate bill.

The CBO today turned in its “score” of the Senate Republican-passed health care legislation and it has told us:

* 22 million more Americans are going to be uninsured.

* The budget deficit will be cut more than $300 billion over the next decade, but that’s because of cuts in Medicaid spending for those Americans with financial need.

* There will be lower premiums, but there also will be less coverage.

It’s still a “mean” overhaul

Donald J. Trump said he wanted a less “mean” health care insurance plan than what the House of Representatives approved. The CBO score suggests that the Senate version of health care overhaul doesn’t make the grade.

Is the GOP plan in trouble? That depends on who’s doing the talking. Since this blog gives me a voice to speak out, I’ll suggest that Senate Republicans on the fence or leaning against the overhaul well might be inclined to vote “no” on this new plan if it comes to a vote later this week.

The president promised he wouldn’t touch Medicaid, that Americans who rely on Medicaid will continue to rely on it once he repealed and replaced the Affordable Care Act with something else.

It looks to me as though this promise won’t be kept.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has his work cut out for him as he looks for the votes to approve this bill.

International news, legal news

Court (more or less) restores Trump’s travel ban

The notion of banning people from entering this nation because they come from places where most citizens practice a certain religion remains repugnant to me.

The United States of America is supposed to stand for a principle that welcomes all citizens of the world. That’s no longer the case.

Donald J. Trump’s ban on folks coming from six Muslim-majority nations has been kinda/sorta restored by the U.S. Supreme Court, which today issued a 6-3 ruling to back the president. Today’s ruling overturns a lower court decision that threw out the ban on the basis that it discriminates against people because of their religion.

What does it mean? I guess it bans anyone who comes here who lacks any “bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

Others can come in, according to the court.

My question remains the same: Will any of this make us safer against international terrorists? I do not believe that’s the case.

It’s just a partial ban

Nothing in the president’s initiative prevents U.S. citizens from committing acts of terror. The U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed those folks at Fort Hood in November 2009 is an American, to cite just one example.

I continue to cling to the notion that “extreme vetting,” which the president also has called for, isn’t a bad thing by itself. Indeed, U.S. customs and immigration officials need to do better at ensuring at points of entry that everyone coming here does not pose a threat; they’re doing that already.

Today’s ruling only settles it temporarily. The court’s next term begins in October and the justices will take it up fully then.

Score one for the president, though. He got a ruling he can live with, even though it won’t do a thing to make us safer against those who would harm us.

medical news, national news, political news

Planned Parenthood: classic political football

Oh, how I wish there were more U.S. Senate Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine. Or Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

These two GOP moderate lawmakers are standing firm in their desire to see Planned Parenthood retain its federal government support. They dislike the Senate Republicans’ draft of a bill to overhaul the Affordable Care Act because it cuts money for Planned Parenthood for a year.

You see, we now have the makings of a political football game, with Planned Parenthood being the ball and competing forces within the Republican Party — not to mention the Democratic Party — kicking it all over the proverbial field.

Debate will get heated.

“There are already longstanding restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion, so this is not what this debate is about. And Planned Parenthood is an important provider of healthcare services, including family planning and cancer screenings for millions of Americans, particularly women,” Collins said.

Abortion, that’s the kicker. Which means that abortion is at the epicenter of this particular discussion.

Senate and House conservatives detest Planned Parenthood because it does provide abortion referrals to women seeking to end their pregnancies. Last time I looked, it’s a legal activity. According to the “true believers,” though, Planned Parenthood is sanctioning the “murder of unborn children” and therefore its mission is steeped in evil intent.

Collins, though, is correct to point out two things about Planned Parenthood. One is that Congress already has written into law restrictions on federal funding for abortion; two is that Planned Parenthood provides a number of vital health care services for Americans.

But the organization is going to get kicked around, mauled, chewed up and spit out as competing legislative factions argue over whether the new health care legislation should use taxpayer money to keep it functioning.

I’m on Sen. Collins’s side.

Sports news

This young man is the next superstar?

Jordan Spieth seems like a quiet young man. He hails from Dallas. He plays golf for a living. He’s pretty good at it, too.

He won a golf tournament over the weekend by sinking a shot out of a sand bunker. Spectacular stuff, to be sure. For a golf fan who is still waiting for the return of its most recent super-duper star, a guy named Tiger, I am pleased to see another young man emerge to capture the attention of the golfing world.

Golf is about as statistic-happy a sport as, say, baseball. Consider this little tidbit the announcers tossed into our laps: Spieth, who’s 23 years of age, is the second-youngest player ever to win his 10th professional golf event. The youngest is the aforementioned Tiger Woods; the third youngest is a guy out of Ohio named Jack Nicklaus.

Think about that for a moment. Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, Jack Nicklaus.

The young Texan surely understands that he currently is walking among some pretty tall cotton.

local news, Sports news

Amarillo mayor is talkin’ baseball

Amarillo Mayor Ginger Nelson is sounding mighty pleased these days, with good reason.

The city scored a big win this past week with an announcement that a minor league baseball franchise is pulling up stakes and relocating to the city she has helped govern for the past few weeks.

The San Antonio Missions will play ball at the new ballpark/multipurpose event venue to be built in downtown Amarillo. They’ll start their 2019 season in April of that year and the plan is for them to stay possibly for decades, depending on the number of contract extensions they sign.

OK, we don’t yet know the name of the new team, but a couple of things jumped out at me as I watched Nelson’s TV interview this past weekend.

* She credits the weather as being a big selling point for the Elmore Group deciding to move the Missions to Amarillo. That’s a bit of a surprise. Nelson said the weather from “April to September” is ideal for evening baseball. Low humidity, “downtown wind,” placid temperatures after the sun goes down all worked in Amarillo’s favor to luring the team here.

But … but … but what about those infamous spring winds, Mme. Mayor? Isn’t there a standing joke here about how, if you don’t like the weather, “just wait 10 minutes”? Let’s hope for the best on that one.

* Nelson also answered a valid question about the cost of the multipurpose event venue and how it’s going to cost more than that what the non-binding referendum in November 2015 called for. That measure pegged the price at $32 million; the current price tag is $45.5 million. “That’s an apples and oranges” comparison, Nelson told KAMR’s Jackie Kingston.

The referendum presumed an “independent baseball team” would be playing at the MPEV. The Missions are a major league-affiliated minor league AA team, which she said will provide a much better entertainment product for fans to enjoy.

See the interview here.

I am in the mayor’s corner in celebrating the pending arrival of this new entertainment feature to Amarillo. I’ve noted before, but I believe it bears repeating: I see no downside in the city’s effort to its downtown district.

medical news, national news, political news

Good call, Sen. Ernst; ask your ‘bosses’

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, is doing something quite useful.

Sen. Ernst says she is undecided on the Senate Republican health care overhaul plan designed to replace the Affordable Care Act. Her response? She wants to poll her constituents back home. She wants their opinion on what the Senate GOP wants to do to — or with — their health care insurance.

How about that, dear reader? She wants her bosses to weigh in, to give her advice on what she should do when this matter comes to a vote, possibly as early as this week.

Here’s the deal, though. It’s fair to wonder a couple of things about the freshman senator.

Is she truly undecided, or has she secretly made up her mind and is using the poll as a ruse? And if she polls her constituents, will the questions be fair, without a hint of bias? You know how these surveys can work. If you ask questions a certain way, you can elicit certain answers.

Sen. Ernst might not have much time to collect responses from her Iowa constituents. I’ll hope for the best for her and hope that she’ll do the right thing by asking the questions straight up and will act on what her constituents tell her … one way or the other.

If her bosses back home share the views of so many other Americans — that they detest the GOP alternative — I think I know what they’ll tell her if they’re given the chance to speak freely.

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