Category Archives: national news

media news, medical news, national news

Pence is wrong; media telling the truth

REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

Donald Trump’s top-tier toadie, the vice president, has decided that the media are to blame for sowing seeds of panic among Americans concerned about the coronavirus pandemic.

Mike Pence has been wrong about a lot of things. This one ranks near the top.

Vice President Pence spoke this week in defense of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic that has killed 138,000 Americans and infected more than 1 million of us. He then offered a critique of the media, declaring that the media have hit the panic button.

Pence keeps referring to the “whole of government response” that he says has been a success. It has not!

A nation with 4 percent of the world’s population has more than 25 percent of the world’s deaths from the pandemic. That’s how you define success, Mr. VPOTUS?

Donald Trump has failed to lead the nation. He is challenging the expertise of actual medical experts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for school reopening have been pushed to the back of the shelf as Trump insists that schools reopen this fall with classrooms full of children and teachers.

Do I need to remind everyone that Trump said at the beginning of the outbreak that it would disappear … just like that? It hasn’t.

Meanwhile, the media are doing what they are empowered by the U.S. Constitution to do. They are seeking to hold government accountable, which is part of the media’s mission. Every president — until Donald Trump — has understood the media’s role and they have accepted their role as part of the job they inherited.

To that end, Mike Pence is far from alone in criticizing the media’s coverage of the pandemic. He is part of the Trumpster Corps of loyalists that has endorsed Trump’s idiocy that the media are “the enemy of the people.” Therefore, when the media deliver bad or “negative” news, the Trumpsters call it “fake,” when in fact the news is as real as it gets.

This media criticism, which is unfounded, cuts me to the quick. I loved pursuing my journalism craft for more than three decades. It hurts to see newspapers floundering as they are these days. However, there still is some great journalism being practiced. The media are doing their job. They are telling us the hard truth about a disease that is killing and sickening too many Americans.

A big part of that truth the media are telling is that Donald Trump is failing this supreme test of presidential leadership.

medical news, national news

What happened to the summer pandemic miracle?

I’m trying to recall something I thought I heard from Donald John “Miracle Man in Chief” Trump.

Back when the coronavirus was taking wing, I thought I heard Trump declare that the virus would disappear miraculously when temperatures heated up in the country. Didn’t he say that?

Well, here we are. The southern regions of the country, from Arizona to Florida, are roasting in 100-plus-degree temperatures.

Oh, wait! Where is the spike in COVID-19 infection occurring? It’s in the southern parts of the United States of America.

So, what happened to Trump’s prediction? Hey, I get it. He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about then. He doesn’t know now.

medical news, national news

Georgia governor: No. 1 knucklehead

I hereby nominate Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as Knucklehead of the Month, maybe the year.

How did the Republican governor earn this dubious distinction? By issuing an executive order that overrides local officials in Georgia who have ordered residents to wear masks to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

What in the name of public safety has gotten into Kemp?

Kemp issued the order because, by golly, he just doesn’t see the need to wear masks. He ignores the stern and serious advice from damn near every medical professional on Earth who tell us that masks — along with social distancing — are sure-fire preventatives against the disease that continues to sicken and kill Americans.

I am heartened that fellow Republican governors — such as Texas’ Greg Abbott — see the situation quite differently. Abbott has gone in the opposite direction, ordering masks when Texans venture into indoor settings.

Moreover, companies that are doing business in Georgia have ordered their employees and customers who enter their establishments to wear masks. That means that Gov. Kemp can issue executive orders until the cows come home, some folks in his state aren’t going to listen.

This is part and parcel of what has happened in this country. We have politicized a global pandemic that is taking no prisoners. The coronavirus has killed 138,000 Americans. It has sickened more than 3 million of us. Our nation’s rate of death and infection far exceed the percentage of the worldwide population that resides in the United States.

And yet we have Republican politicians — led by the Idiot in Chief, Donald Trump — flouting medical advice by refusing to wear masks. Their political followers walk in lockstep with them, refusing to maintain proper distance. What happens then? The rate of infection skyrockets, right along with the rate of hospitalization … and death!

Then we get my nominee for Knucklehead of the Month issuing an idiotic executive order that seeks to override local officials’ tough decisions on how to keep their constituents safe from a viral infection that could kill them.

Stupidity is alive inside the Georgia statehouse.

national news

Sad for Sessions’ political demise? Hardly, however …

I would be saddened by Jeff Sessions’ loss this week in the race for the U.S. Senate were it not for the fact that I detest virtually his entire political record.

Then again, there’s an element to Sessions’ defeat in the Republican primary in Alabama that does make me a bit, um, chagrined.

Sessions once served in the Senate. He was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. He is partly responsible for Trump’s election in 2016 to the presidency. Trump appointed him attorney general.

Then he did what Trump wanted him to do. He enforced the separation of children from their parents who tried to enter the nation illegally. He endorsed the president’s call to end protections for undocumented immigrants who came here as children. Indeed, this former senator’s record is replete with efforts to dial back civil rights reforms. He is a throwback to the stereotypical white Southern politician. Sessions was Trump’s guy at Justice.

Then the AG did the unthinkable in the Lawbreaker in Chief’s world: He followed the law by recusing himself from DOJ’s investigation into allegations that Russia attacked our electoral system. His recusal resulted in the hiring of Robert Mueller as special counsel.

Sessions then managed to incur the rage of the man who once hailed him as a legal champion. Donald Trump demanded the AG show him blind loyalty. Sessions said he can’t do that. The law required him to recuse himself, as he couldn’t investigate a campaign in which he was a key player.

Trump was having none of it. He sought to humiliate Sessions. He ranted and raged against him via Twitter. Trump has declared that hiring Sessions as AG was the biggest mistake he has made as president. He fired Sessions, who then ran for his former Senate seat. On Tuesday, Sessions lost the Republican Party runoff to former Auburn University head football coach Tommy Tuberville, who Trump endorsed over Sessions.

It’s apparently over for Sessions. He won’t run for political office again. It’s not that I will miss this man’s contributions to public policy. However, I am chagrined that the single noble act he performed resulted in a form of political triumph for an imbecile — Donald Trump — who refuses to accept the reality that Jeff Sessions understood the boundaries he could not cross.

national news

You have to watch it to believe it

I am not going to buy into the half-baked notion that Donald Trump is losing his marbles, much like the bullsh** that Trump’s team is peddling against Joe Biden, his presumptive Democratic Party opponent this fall.

Still, when you watch Donald Trump stand before reporters in front of the White House and then listen to his incoherent and incomprehensible riff about this and that, you start to wonder whether the president of the United States is afraid of losing.

I am sensing a serious fear factor weighing on Trump.

I see poll after poll suggest Biden is pulling farther ahead. I am not taking them to the bank just yet. You need to remember that President Hillary Clinton and President Michael Dukakis enjoyed wide margins against their foes in 2016 and in 1988; it didn’t work out well for them.

However, when you watch Trump make virtually no mention of the pandemic that has gripped the world and then launch into a campaign-rally riff at the White House, well … you get the picture, yes?

What’s even more amazing is how little connection all the myriad points he seeks to make have to each other. It all becomes a stream-of-consciousness tirade.

He boasts about what a great job his administration is doing to fight the pandemic, ignoring the 136,000 individuals in this country who have died from COVID-19. A nation with 4 percent of the world’s population has recorded 25 percent of the COVID infections and about the same percentage of deaths from the disease. That is success? Really?

Well, the campaign has begun. No need to wait for the traditional Labor Day kickoff. Trump is in full re-election campaign mode. Joe Biden is ramping up his effort to unseat Trump.

I will remain puzzled and baffled no doubt to the end, though, wondering how in the world Donald Trump can cling to the base of supporters who listen to the same nonsense that flows from this clown’s mouth that I hear.

They hear the Gospel according to The Donald.

I hear so much crap.

Go figure.

national news

Is this kind of transition possible?

I invite you to spend the next three or so minutes of your time watching the video I have attached to this blog post.

Then I want to invite you to imagine Donald John Trump issuing the same kind of statement to the individual who will succeed him as president of the United States.

Oh, how I want it to be Joseph R. Biden Jr., who will face Trump in this year’s presidential election. If it’s not, then we’ll get to wait until November 2024 — and, yes, I shudder at that thought — to hear Donald Trump begin to hand over power to the next president.

I just thought I would post this video to show you how a president is supposed to conduct himself when he prepares to leave the White House in the hands of someone he no doubt opposed philosophically, but who won a fair-and-square free election.

I do not expect this kind of grace from Donald Trump.

While I’m on the subject, take a look at the next video. It’s a bit longer but it depicts President Obama talking about Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

What you see in this video, as in the first one, is an example of a president calling the nation to put its differences aside, to wish the new president success and to assure a smooth transition.

Once again, just try to imagine Donald Trump offering this to the individual who will succeed him.

medical news, national news

Open warfare over pandemic response?

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I can’t believe what I see unfolding before us.

It looks as though some members of Donald Trump’s administrative team are declaring open warfare against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert over the tone of Fauci’s remarks describing the state of the battle under way against the COVID-19 pandemic.

They dislike Fauci’s brutal tone, which contrasts the happy talk that Trump is delivering. So, they want to sideline Fauci. They are keeping him away from the Oval Office, away from Donald Trump.

The president keeps insisting that public schools need to reopen fully this fall, despite the spiraling infection rate from the pandemic. Medical experts join Fauci in trying to tell Trump that school classrooms pose a serious threat to the health of students, their teachers and the family members of them all. Donald Trump is ignoring them, listening instead to the “sage advice” offered by talk show gasbags like Sean Hannity and game show hosts like Chuck Woolery, who proclaims that the COVID scare is a “lie.”

Meanwhile, the Trumpkin Corps is putting out opposition research on Anthony Fauci, the Ivy League-educated physician who has served six presidents of both political parties. Indeed, it was on President George W. Bush’s watch that Fauci led the effort to deliver HIV/AIDS research to Third World countries afflicted by that disease.

Now he’s being vilified as one who “makes mistakes”? He is not to be trusted? Dr. Fauci doesn’t “know what he’s talking about,” according to Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick?

Give me a break!

This internecine battle is one more startling example of the incompetence being demonstrated by Donald Trump’s administration as it wages what looks to many of us like a losing fight against a killer disease.

And … Trump wants to get rid of the nation’s leading expert on how to win that fight? Incredible!

education news, medical news, national news

Trump shows his ignorance yet again

Donald John “Ignoramus in Chief” Trump threatens to pull federal funds from public schools if they don’t reopen this fall, per his edict.

Sigh …

No, he is not going to do that. He has no authority to do anything of the sort. Donald Trump once again is showing us what he doesn’t know about the job to which he was elected … and from which I hope he gets booted out in about 120 days.

Fox News’ Chris Wallace challenged an assertion delivered by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Sunday. DeVos repeated Trump’s threat, to which Wallace told her that Congress appropriates federal funds for public schools. Wallace asked “Under what authority are you and the president going to unilaterally cut off funding, funding that’s been approved from Congress and most of the money goes to disadvantaged students or students with disabilities?” “You can’t do that,” he continued.

That means that Trump is out of the game.

DeVos didn’t answer the question directly. She couldn’t answer. Because she is as ignorant about government as Donald Trump. She did say, “Look, American investment in education is a promise to students and their families. If schools aren’t going to reopen and not fulfill that promise, they shouldn’t get the funds, and give it to the families to decide to go to a school that is going to meet that promise.”

Americans are getting sick from the COVID-19 pandemic in increasing numbers. That poses threats to students, teachers and their loved ones. Donald Trump’s demand that schools reopen this fall runs directly counter to the medical advice he is getting from the infectious disease experts with whom he has surrounded himself.

Oh, wait! He knows more than they do. Isn’t that what he has inferred … about anything?

national news, political news

Lincoln Project firing on all cylinders

It’s called the Lincoln Project.

It is a political organization comprising former and even some current Republican politicians and political operatives. They all have one important trait in common.

They want to defeat Donald John Trump in this year’s presidential election. Why is that so unusual? Well, let’s see: Oh, yeah … Trump calls himself a Republican.

But … is he really created in the same mold as the man after whom the Lincoln Project is named? Hardly.

Abraham Lincoln was the nation’s first Republican president. He is arguably the greatest man ever to hold the office. He fought to preserve the Union that had been torn apart by Civil War. The Union won the war, but that victory cost Lincoln his life at Ford’s Theater.

The party that Donald Trump now controls bears no resemblance to the party that Lincoln helped create. The Lincoln Project has taken an astonishingly high profile in this campaign. No only is the Lincoln Project working overtime to defeat Trump, it is working equally hard to elect a Democrat, Joseph Biden Jr., to succeed Trump.

As this election continues to take shape, I am struck by the number of GOP operatives — if not active-duty GOP politicians — who have spoken of their utter disgust with Donald Trump. GOP members of Congress remain essentially silent as Trump continues to bungle the national response to the COVID-19 crisis. Trump also appears feckless as the nation reels from incidents of brutality against African-Americans, not to mention his shameful silence over reports that Russian government officials placed bounties on the heads of American service personnel killed in battle in Afghanistan.

Thus, the Lincoln Project is looking for a suitable alternative to the man masquerading as president. At this moment, the only possible alternative happens to be Democrat, Joe Biden.

And so the Lincoln Project, which carries the name of arguably the nation’s greatest president, is seeking to remove the individual who to my way of thinking has carved out his own niche as the nation’s worst president.

national news

Yes, Stone is still a felon

I am going to presume that Robert Mueller III wishes he wouldn’t be dragged back into the news cycle, but he has been brought back into public discussion.

Donald Trump commuted the 40-month prison sentence that awaited Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime pal and dirty trickster.

Trump said, not surprisingly, that Stone had been treated “unfairly.” Mueller, in an essay published by the Washington Post, disputes that contention vigorously.

Here’s the deal, though. Suppose the president had pardoned Stone. It would have expunged the record of a felony. A pardon doesn’t expunge people’s memories, their knowledge of what brought about the pardon. Mueller writes in the Post: A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress.

Had the president pardoned Stone, all of that would have remained part of the unofficial record. So, what Trump did merely was to keep his pal out of the slammer, which is the reward Stone got for being so loyal to Trump.

I really am not worried that Trump might actually pardon Stone before he leaves office. So what if he does? Trump already has saved Stone from the worst of his conviction, a prison sentence. A full pardon doesn’t wipe clean the memories of those of us who believed in the conviction that came down in the first place.

Indeed, the first sentence of Roger Stone’s obituary is going to include a prominent mention of the crimes for which a jury convicted him … no matter what!