Monthly Archives: April 2020

medical news

Trump now fighting openly with CDC boss

Welcome to the fray, Dr. Robert Redfield.

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on one day that the coronavirus pandemic could spring up again this fall and/or winter and it could be worse than what we’ve experienced already.

Then the nation’s top politician, Donald John Trump, sought to dispute the newspaper report that quoted Dr. Redfield.

Oh, but then Dr. Redfield said the Washington Post quoted him correctly, that, yep, he made that statement about a possible return of the viral infection that’s already killed nearly 50,000 Americans.

I am going to side with the doctor. The politician is looking only after his own political future. The CDC boss is motivated more by caring for the rest of us.

Donald Trump — as I have stated already many times in this blog — needs to keep his mouth shut. He is putting us in danger. This is a dangerous individual.

national news

This guy has seen Trump up close … and he’s spot on in his analysis

Penn Jillette is a magician, actor and TV personality who has some experience dealing with Donald John Trump. A friend of mine brought this video to my attention. I watched it and I want to commend it to you.

Jillette speaks of his grudging admiration of Trump, with whom he worked on “Celebrity Apprentice.” He also talks about the emptiness in Trump.

He says he never saw Trump laugh, except to poke fun at someone; he says he didn’t ever see Trump tell a joke; he said Trump has no discernible interest in, say, music.

The man is an empty vessel, according to Jillette.

I listened to this fellow’s assessment of the president of the United States. I happen to wonder: How in the name of electoral sanity did this guy end up in the Oval Office?

Take a look at this. It’s worth your time.

I’m still shaking my head.

medical news

‘Tyranny’ is not the enemy; the enemy is a killer disease

The nimrod in this picture has it wrong, along with the rest of the nimrods who protested the restrictions imposed on Virginia residents by that state’s governor, Ralph Northam.

The enemy that should arouse this clown’s ire isn’t “tyranny.” It is a disease that could kill this clown if he isn’t careful. Thus, Gov. Northam as well as many other governors has imposed restrictions that seek to protect the people he was elected to serve.

Of course, we’re hearing from our share of dips***s too in Texas. Some of them descended on Austin to protest the measures that Gov. Greg Abbott has imposed. Abbott is about to lift some of them, but he insists that he will rely on “data and doctors” to guide his decisions.

I remain committed instead to protecting my health along with my wife’s health, not to mention the health of my children, their loved ones, my grandkids. I also want to add that a significant majority of Americans oppose any lifting of the restrictions until there is certainty that the coronavirus is on the wane; we aren’t there yet.

Do I want to return to some semblance of normal? Sure I do. I also happen to believe in good government and my definition of good government compels elected officials to take occasionally dramatic measures to protect us against disease. The coronavirus that has killed nearly 45,000 Americans is deadly in the extreme.

Some of the protesters are marching under signs that say “Give me liberty or give me death.” Think about the hideous irony of that message. If someone wants “liberty” as defined by protesters’ demands that governors relax the restrictions they have imposed, they well could also get “death” if the restrictions are taken away prematurely.

Liberty and death in this context are not mutually exclusive, my fellow Americans … if you get my drift.

local news

Masks becoming a way of life

That’s me behind the mask. The mask itself is a repurposed curtain that used to hand in a room in our former home in Amarillo. My wife has turned it into the uniform of the day.

It’s functional, even though my glasses fog up when I don the mask and am forced to breathe while my nose and mouth are covered.

I want to show this to you to launch a brief blog post that suggests these masks are going to become a part of our lives for the foreseeable future as we take measures to stave off the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is likely to begin lifting some of the restrictions imposed on Texans. The Princeton City Council, which governs the city where we live, has laid down restrictions on top of what Abbott has declared. Restaurants are closed to dine-in customers; churches aren’t having in-person services on Sunday; assorted services are closed, such as hair salons, nail parlors, coffee shops.

The masks have become a ubiquitous presence in Princeton. I see them on all grocery store employees, as mandated by their corporate bosses. Most customers are masked up; my wife and I wear our masks.

We’re all keeping our distance, even while we wear the masks.

I guess this is my way of saying that I actually am beginning to get used to donning the mask when I exit our truck.

It would do us all well to get used to it, too.

national news, political news

Report confirms it: Russians attacked our election in 2016

(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

As if we didn’t know it already.

KHOU-TV in Houston reports that a Senate committee has determined that Russia attacked our electoral system in 2016, a notion that Donald John Trump has disputed, siding with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and denigrating our intelligence community’s analysis.

KHOU said: A bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday confirms the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to sow chaos. Senators warned that it could happen again this presidential election year.

What do you know about that?

This whole story became served as the starting point for the lengthy investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump fought it like crazy. He disparaged special counsel Robert Mueller III’s work to get at the truth. Trump kept insisting it was “fake news,” and a “hoax.”

It was nothing of the sort.

Then he stood before the world in Helsinki and said he believed Putin’s denial and dismissed the consensus developed by the nation’s intelligence network.

This investigation effectively closes the book on that terrible chapter in our electoral history. However, the warning from senators should not be ignored, that the Russians are doing it again this year. They are seeking to sow chaos once more.

Are we going to impose security measures that build impenetrable walls around our voting process? Isn’t this a matter of national security?

Donald Trump took an oath to protect our way of life, to be on guard against hostile actions from foreign nations and to take action to defend us.

This prediction is an easy one to make: Donald Trump is going to violate his oath of office once again by doing nothing to stop this likely attack from a hostile power.

local news, national news

Disease reveals partisan divide

I never thought I would see such a thing.

A viral infection sweeps around the world, killing hundreds of thousands of human beings; nearly 50,000 Americans have died. It’s the kind of international tragedy that transcends partisan politics. Isn’t that right?

Hah! Hardly.

The argument in this country on how to battle this disease is being split along partisan lines. Democrats are arguing in favor of continued restrictions, seeking to protect citizens’ health and their very lives. Republicans argue that the restrictions are strangling our economy, that we need to revive the business and manufacturing to jumpstart our way of life.

I am going to side with the Democrats. I know. That’s no surprise. It’s where I line up.

Republican governors are moving to relax restrictions. Democratic governors are staying the course. Republican governors think the economy is more vital, I guess, than human lives. Democratic governors seem to think the reverse is true.

Now comes this tidbit from right here in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex: Colleyville is getting ready to allow businesses to reopen, apparently in direct violation of Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to maintain the shelter in place policy at least until April 30; the Colleyville decision also runs counter to what Tarrant County has imposed. Colleyville Mayor Joe Newton plans to relax the restrictions beginning this weekend.

This makes me nervous. It might prompt cities in nearby Collin County, where we live, to follow suit. I am not ready to make that leap. My wife and I are wearing masks on the rare occasions we do venture out. We wipe down every surface we touch and we wash our hands with sanitizer.

I do not have a job. Neither of us has been deprived of household income. So the economy is not a part of our personal decision making.

I just had hoped we could have rallied as one nation to fight this pandemic. Alas, it isn’t happening. The disease has widened the already huge great divide. Nice!

environmental news

Happy Earth Day … if only we could cheer it this year

I have been fond of wishing everyone a Happy Earth Day, which I have done repeatedly on this blog.

This year it’s different. It’s vastly different, in fact. We acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Earth Day under a severe, foreboding and ominous cloud brought to our good Earth by the coronavirus pandemic.

Fifty years ago we began setting aside a day to celebrate the only planet we have. Earth is home. That’s it. We have to care for it. President Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, vowing to exert greater emphasis on ways to protect our precious Earth.

Here we are today. Our worldwide economy has effectively been shut down by the viral infection that has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings.

The “good news,” if you want to call it such, is that our air has gotten much cleaner as we have driven far less. We have nowhere to go. Our motor vehicles are parked.

OK, so the air is cleaner. We still have water pollution issues. We have deforestation that leads to global warming and climate change. We’re still throwing too much trash into landfills. We still are using too much fossil fuel that also spews pollution into the air.

Our minds and hearts, at the moment, are directed at fighting the pandemic. I am all for that effort, to be sure. I do not want to rush into a return to “normal living” while the virus is still infecting and killing human beings.

I do want to wish everyone once more a Happy Earth Day, although I understand completely that our attention is being diverted to more immediately urgent matters.

national news

Immigration ban: mostly for show

Donald J. “Xenophobe in Chief” Trump’s temporary ban on all immigration just doesn’t pass the smell test.

He is signing an executive order that bans for 60 days all immigration into the United States, except for those with temporary work visas. Trump says he wants to prevent the spread of the coronavirus that has killed more than 45,000 Americans.

Sure thing, Mr. President, except that the virus is not being “imported” by immigrants. The overwhelming number of new infections is coming from right here at home, which tells me that that the executive order was issued more than just a tad late in the game.

What’s more, the announcement came — as usual — via Twitter. Trump got into a late-night fidgety spell and blasted out the tweet reportedly without consulting immigration officials, the National Security Council, the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security. Gosh, isn’t it essential that you notify the appropriate agency heads of such drastic matters before you make the public announcement?

Trump’s anti-immigration stance is well known. It’s not just the folks who are sneaking in here illegally that has drawn his ire. He wants to clamp down as well on legal immigration. You know, he doesn’t like all that inbound traffic from what he calls “sh**hole countries,” meaning countries from, oh, Africa and Latin America.

The temporary immigration ban is nothing more than another example of Trump pandering to his base.

Reprehensible.

Donald Trump

Not happy criticizing Trump

1 Comment

You may choose to either believe or disbelieve what I want to share in this brief blog post … it matters not one bit which way you go with it.

This blog’s fairly relentless criticism of Donald John Trump is not something I actually enjoy delivering. It’s just that I feel I must say these things about a man I consider to be the most fundamentally unfit human being ever elected to the presidency, at least in my lifetime.

I was born during the Harry Truman years. I lived through Dwight Eisenhower’s two terms, John F. Kennedy’s brief tenure, Lyndon Johnson’s tumultuous tenure, Richard Nixon’s scandal-ridden time, Gerald Ford’s healing of the nation, Jimmy Carter’s single term, Ronald Reagan’s two-term “Morning in America,” George H.W. Bush’s history-making single term, Bill Clinton’s successful two terms, George W. Bush’s call to war against terror and Barack Obama’s time that brought economic recovery.

They all had public service in their background. They all brought something of value to this exalted office. I didn’t vote for all of these men, dating back to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election, the first time I was eligible to vote. They all understood government and were able to talk intelligently and coherently about how it works.

Then we got Donald Trump. His presidency will go down in flames, either at this year’s election or later if — heaven forbid — he wins re-election. There is not a single thing this guy is likely to do that would change the equation.

He lies incessantly. Trump talks to us with language that sounds as if it comes from the mouth of a seventh-grade playground bully. He is incoherent, inarticulate, totally devoid of compassion and understanding. Trump has no gauge that allows him to relate to human beings’ suffering.

I take no pleasure in leveling this criticism at Trump. Really, I  do not.

I love this country. I went to war for this country. I want the best for it. I want the United States to prosper and to thrive. Yes, we’re heading for a crippling recession brought by circumstances of no one’s making … but worsened by Donald Trump’s indecision, his ineptness and his incompetence in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

So help me, though, I will continue to write critically of this individual. I will get angry on occasion. You can bet on it.

I just want you to understand that I do so with no joy. As Trump would say: Believe me.

local news, Sports news

Minor league baseball falls victim to the pandemic

Oh, brother …

This story saddens me at a level I never thought I would experience. It comes from The Associated Press and it portends a grim short-term future for minor league baseball across a nation that is caught in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic.

Listen up, my friends in Amarillo, you fans of the Sod Poodles who had hoped to be flocking to Hodgetown — the city’s shiny new ballpark —  to cheer on the defending Texas League champions.

AP reports that minor league baseball experienced a 2.6 percent attendance increase in 2019. Minor league ball had more than 40 million fans for the 15th straight season, according to AP.

The 2020 season hasn’t started. There’s no prospect on the horizon when it will start, unlike what’s happening with Major League Baseball, where team owners and the players union are working on a schedule that would commence with no fans present in the stands. The AP reported:

While Major League Baseball tries to figure out a way to play this summer, the prospects for anything resembling a normal minor league season are increasingly bleak.

For minor league communities across the country from Albuquerque to Akron, looking forward to cheap hot dogs, fuzzy mascot hugs and Elvis theme nights, it’s a small slice of a depressing picture.

Yes, you can include Amarillo in that roster of minor league cities. Amarillo fought hard to lure the Sod Poodles from San Antonio. The team’s initial-season success in 2019 was one for the books. It was epic. The fans can’t wait for the first pitch.

Then came the COVID-19 crisis. Every single sporting league is shut down. That includes the plethora of minor leagues scattered.

When will they play ball? When will it be safe to cram fans into ballparks, sitting next to each other, allowing them to high-five and cheer when the home team scores a run or makes a spectacular play in the field?

Uhh, who in the world knows?

At this moment, it doesn’t look good. We might be in for a lost season.