Monthly Archives: March 2020

local news, State news

Why must we have runoff elections at all?

A friend and I were chatting today about the upcoming runoff election in Texas House District 2 between Rep. Dan Flynn and challenger Bryan Slaton.

Flynn finished first in the Republican Party primary on March 3; but he didn’t get 50 percent plus one vote, which would have allowed him to win the party nomination without a runoff election. Slaton finished second, so he and Flynn will run against each other in May.

My friend wants to know: Why do we even need a runoff election? He said he would support ending this practice, which I mentioned to him is essentially a “Southern thing,” given that states in the South historically have required primary winners to win an outright majority, even in multi-candidate fields.

He poses a good question.

The House District 2 runoff will produce a hideously abysmal voter turnout. That’s the way it goes with these extended primary contests. The only folks who tend to vote in runoffs are the hyper-dedicated, the zealots. The rest of the electorate usually can’t find the time, let alone the interest, to vote in runoff elections.

We also have at least one important statewide race to decide in the runoff: two Democrats are running for the U.S. Senate seat, M.J. Hegar and Royce West.

Why, indeed, do we need to do this? These elections cost us all a good bit of money, but too damn few of us ever take part. A simple plurality during the primary ought to suffice.

I mean, c’mon … presidents of the United States are elected without ever gaining a majority of votes.

medical news, national news

Trump is coming apart … piece by piece

Peter Alexander is a competent, well-trained, highly respected broadcast journalist who works for NBC News. So, when he asks what he has called essentially a “softball question” of the president, one could expect the president to answer the question forthrightly.

Except that the president happens to be Donald John “Liar in Chief” Trump.

Alexander asked Trump today whether the president’s soft-pedaling of the coronavirus pandemic was giving Americans “false hope” given that the evidence suggests there is reason for Americans to be afraid. “What would you tell Americans?” Alexander asked.

Trump said he would tell them “that you’re a terrible reporter” and “that’s a very nasty question.”

Good grief, man!

Donald Trump today — once again — has shown his utter and categorical unfitness for the job he occupies. He is supposed to be the voice of calm, reassurance, empathy at a time when the public demands it of their president. Instead, we saw another example of the petulance that Trump exhibits when the chips are down, when circumstance requires wisdom.

Americans are dying of coronavirus. Millions of other Americans are concerned to the point of fright over the prospects that they might test positive. The nation still needs more testing equipment. We need more hospital beds. We need a coordinated national response that complements the response that cities, counties and states are mounting to fight this pandemic.

Most of all we need a president who can lead a nation full of citizens who are worrying about their loved ones.

Instead, we have a president who insults a respected reporter who is just doing his job.

Disgraceful.

national news

Do as we say, not as we do?

You may accuse me of nitpicking if you wish. That’s fine. I don’t give a pile of rat sh** if you do.

The picture you see with this blog post shows the president of the United States along with members of his coronavirus response team. Donald Trump and others have been briefing the pubic on measures the government is taking to stem the infection rate.

They’ve talked a whole lot about “social distancing,” which reminds us to maintain a certain distance from other people; the coronavirus is transmitted easily from person to person. It’s what they call “community transmission” or “community spread.”

What’s wrong with this picture? It shows that the brainiacs comprising the pandemic response team members aren’t doing what they’re telling the rest of us to do.

Donald Trump even has chided media members for “sitting too close to each other” while he blathers on incoherently.

C’mon, folks! Get with the program! If you’re going to issue stern warnings and advice on how to avoid getting a potentially disease, you should at least have the common sense, decency and smarts to demonstrate the thing you’re telling us to do.

national news

They throw ’em in jail for this kind of thing, senators

What do you know about this?

Four U.S. senators, three Republicans and a Democrat, allegedly have been caught doing something that gets many of the rest of us tossed in the slammer.

GOP Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, along with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, allegedly dumped a whole lot of stock immediately before its value tanked. A coincidence?

Many of us are quite skeptical of the timing of it all.

It’s called “insider trading,” which is what some individuals are able to do when they get information about investment value that isn’t known widely to the rest of the public.

Burr has asked for a Senate Ethics Committee probe into the matter. He also denies doing anything wrong. Sure thing, senator. That’s what they all say.

Feinstein is the Senate’s senior Democrat; Burr chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee; Inhofe has been in the Senate for many years; Loeffler is a GOP newbie, having just taken office in recent weeks after being appointed to succeed Sen. Johnny Isaakson, who retired.

This doesn’t look good for any of them.

Calls are beginning to mount for a full-blown investigation into what they knew and when they knew it. Others are calling for all of them to resign.

This is infuriating, if true. Part of me wants to grant them all the due process they deserve; they are, after all, citizens just like the rest of us and they deserve the presumption of innocence. Another part of me, though, tends to believe the allegations. They need not quit the Senate just because someone has leveled a serious charge against them.

However, all Americans — millions of whom are suffering terrible financial pain as a result of this pandemic — need and deserve answers into what these so-called “guardians” of the public trust knew before they dumped their stock and made all that dough.

national news

Pandemic crisis spurs renewed hope in our future

And now … for a healthy dose of uplifting news at a time when we all could use a bit of cheer.

If you’re worrying about the future of our nation — and, for that matter, our planet — consider all the stories we are hearing about the acts of kindness being performed by young people as they help their neighbors during the coronavirus pandemic.

I am struck and frankly a bit stunned at the stories we keep hearing, reading and grasping. Young people are running errands for their elderly neighbors, or even complete strangers. They grasp the notion that some Americans need a helping hand, but lack the mobility that others possess. So they step up, lend a hand — and they do with no strings attached. They realize, to borrow the phrase that’s sweeping the land, that “we’re all in this together.”

“Good Morning America” today featured an organization that sprung up as the pandemic began taking its toll; the organization is called “Invisible Hands.”

Liam Elkind is a 20-something New York City resident who co-founded Invisible Hands. He shops for food and other essentials for neighbors. He is on a state-ordered break from college. He can’t go to the beach or hang out in bars with his pals. So he is extending a helping “invisible hand” to those who need help.

That is just one example of young folks answering the call.

I want to mention this merely to convey what I believe is an example of our nation’s future is in good hands. Sure, the kindness and compassion isn’t limited to young folks. Many millions of Americans of all ages are responding with open hearts as well.

Let’s just be mindful of what is transpiring. It’s a national emergency. States are beginning to lock themselves down. California is the most notable example of the kind of drastic, but necessary, measures that we’re seeing implemented.

Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered every one of the state’s 40 million residents to “stay at home,” and to leave only if they have business that requires them to venture out. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered severe restrictions on the number of people who can gather indoors, a move that has closed restaurants, bars, gymnasiums. These decisions are occurring across the nation.

Young people and others who are physically able are stepping into the breach to lend a much-needed hand.

We’ll get through this. Yes, it might take a good bit of time. The response we’re seeing all over this great land tells me, though, that we’re going to be just fine … and that our future is in good hands.

This, I declare, provides incontrovertible proof of America’s longstanding greatness.

national news

Mike Pence: most obsequious VP ever

Of all the characters and assorted reprobates who answer to the Reprobate in Chief, Donald Trump, the one who astounds me the most daily is Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States.

It’s getting to where I cannot listen to the vice president speak to the nation while standing just a few feet from Donald Trump.

Why? The VPOTUS is the most obsequious individual ever to occupy the office that is next in line to the Big Job.

It’s not enough for Pence, I guess, to listen to Trump heap praise on himself, calling himself the most consequential president in human history, taking credit for things he never has done. Oh, no. Pence has to pour it on. He stands there in front of the nation and the world and continually slathers the president with fawning praise.

I get that VPs are required to be loyal to the individual who asks him or her to run with them. It’s just that when Pence speaks of Donald Trump, he sounds so shallow, so callow, so hollow. 

I keep reminding myself that Pence bills himself as a devout Christian, a man of deep and abiding religious faith. He won’t meet in the same room with women who aren’t his wife. He has told us that his faith guides his public service.

But how in the world does this individual continue to slobber all over a president who is the very antithesis of the beliefs for which Pence believes? Donald Trump has admitted to never seeking forgiveness. He never exhibits an ounce of grace. Yet there is the vice president, continually telling us about the “outstanding leadership” that Donald Trump has shown, particularly during the current pandemic that is scaring the daylights out of millions of Americans.

All the policy initiatives that Pence supposedly is leading? It’s not enough for him merely to report on them. Heavens no. He has to tell us over and over again how much Donald Trump cares for us all, how he “puts Americans’ interests first.” No! He doesn’t!

I can’t listen to this baloney.

medical news

Life in our state is about to change

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued an executive order that is going to change the lives of millions of Texans in ways they might not yet comprehend.

He issued an order that will limit indoor gatherings to 10 or fewer people. Think of that for a moment. It means that beginning Friday, there will be no congregating at barbecue joints, no swilling of cold ones at the end of a tough day at work, no working out at gymnasiums along with other fitness geeks.

I am working on a story for the Farmersville Times and in the midst of compiling some information about how businesses are coping with the coronavirus pandemic, the order came from Gov. Abbott.

Two local restaurants will suspend indoor dining; they will continue to serve “takeout” meals, and they will deliver meals ordered by their customers.

To his credit, Greg Abbott doesn’t view the pandemic as a “hoax.” He is taking it as seriously as he possibly can take anything. Indeed, so are governors, county officials, mayors and state legislators all across the country.

There might be pockets of individuals who disbelieve the seriousness of the virus that has killed thousands of human beings worldwide. They need to shut their pie holes and line up along with the rest of us who are taking these mandates seriously.

Public schools already are closed. The Princeton Independent School District, where we live, will be shuttered at least until May 4. Public colleges and universities in Texas are disallowing face-to-face study in classrooms, enabling students to study online, in their home; that response also is occurring throughout the nation.

My hope is this: The limiting of exposure will stem the outbreak of this illness around the world. Just maybe we can through this crisis sooner rather than later.

Of course, we cannot predict when “sooner” arrives. We’ll know it when it gets here.

national news

One more thought on ‘wartime president’

2 Comments

Call it a form of “stolen valor,” which happens occasionally when individuals claim to be more heroic in battle than they actually were, or they wear medals on their chest they didn’t earn.

Donald Trump’s effort to cast himself as a “wartime president” offends me on at least two levels.

One is that he worked diligently to avoid service during the Vietnam War, getting a physician to diagnose him with bone spurs. Millions of others of us from that generation didn’t have the wherewithal — let alone the inclination — to wiggle our way out of serving our country. So we served. I served! I am proud of my service, as infinitesimal as my contribution to the Vietnam War effort turned out to be.

Thus, for Trump to seek to be called a “wartime president” offends me at that level. It’s visceral, man.

The second level deals with the timing of the assertion he made. We are in the midst of a presidential election year. Donald Trump is seeking re-election. He wants to wear that label as a cynical political ploy to persuade voters that they shouldn’t want to elect a new commander in chief while we’re “at war” with a killer pandemic virus.

It ain’t the same as being at war with an enemy government, or a vast worldwide network of terrorist organizations.

Thus, Donald Trump, in my view, qualifies as the quintessential chicken hawk.

There. On this matter … I’m out!

media news, Uncategorized

Trump resumes feud with media

Well, that was a nice break while it lasted.

Donald Trump took time the other day to offer a good word about the media and their work in covering the coronavirus pandemic. It gave some of us a glimmer of hope that the president was finally beginning to act the part he portrays.

Silly us. He resumed his feud today, blasting the “fake news” the media purportedly conveys. He blasted The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, all of which are great newspapers full of dedicated journalists who do their job to the best of their considerable ability.

None of that matters to this president, who passes judgment on media outlets based on whether they report “positive” news about his administration.

Yep, the feud is back on.

Disgusting.

national news

‘Wartime president’? Are you serious, Mr. POTUS?

Donald John Trump clearly is fixated with macho-sounding language, even as he fails repeatedly to act like the person he portrays himself as being.

He said today at a White House briefing that he considers himself a “wartime president” in light of the struggle the nation is fighting against the coronavirus pandemic.

OK, so he wants to wear the mantle once worn by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, LBJ and George W. Bush, all of whom presided over a nation that was — and is — engaged in actual wars. Trump now is seeking to elevate the struggle against the coronavirus to what we have faced over many decades.

However, Donald Trump has yet to demonstrate the kind and quality of leadership that previous presidents have sought to exhibit. The federal government is still struggling to clear its throat and speak with a single, united, coherent voice on the fight against the pandemic.

In the meantime, Trump continues to fire salvos at the press, whose job is to chronicle events in real time. Does a “wartime president” actually have the time to concoct idiotic attack lines against the media, leveling ridiculous allegations that the media are deliberately conspiring to undermine him?

Hey, I totally get why Trump wants to be called a “wartime president” in an election year. He likely wants to parlay that label into a campaign mantra, seeking to encourage voters to back him because, well, we’re in the “middle of a war. Why do we want to change commanders in chief when we’re at war?”

It’s a cynical and utterly preposterous notion.