Monthly Archives: May 2020

medical news

Now the task force is back on … until when, Mr. POTUS?

Mr. President, your constant mind-changing, course reversals and indecision is trying me more than a bit batty.

You said you were going to disband that coronavirus pandemic response task force at the end of May. Now you say it’s back on, that it’s going to stay active until … um, whenever.

What gives with you?

You shouldn’t have blurted out the pending end of the task force in the beginning if you weren’t settled on the decision you had announced. Oh, what the hell? Why am I wasting my effort telling you something you already should know? I can’t help myself, I reckon.

Look, you did bring on board some deep thinkers, experts on infectious disease. I join others in this country who depend more on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s knowledgeable rhetoric than the blather that others such as you and Mike Pence deliver. I also want to interject that as much as I admire Dr. Deborah Birx’s work on HIV/AIDS, she needs to stop making excuses for your incessant, know-nothing rhetoric. Yes, I saw that video of her fighting like hell to resist jumping out of her skin when you talked openly about Americans ingesting “disinfectants” to fight the killer virus.

I understand the task force will focus now on how to reopen the country safely. Fine. That’s not a bad call. However, I feel the need to remind you that we need more testing out here in Flyover Country.

What’s more, we need to stem the infection rate. We’re still getting sick out here in Texas, Mr. President. Your pal, Gov. Greg Abbott, opened up the state and we’re now receiving the grim dividend of what I believe was a premature return to some semblance of “normal” activity in Texas.

Back to my point. You keep changing your mind. Stop messing with us, Mr. Goofball. The task force can do some valuable work in coordinating research, in talking directly to us and in providing a glimmer of hope even as they tell us the truth about the challenges we will face.

Let ’em talk to us … and stay the hell out of their way.

legal news

This indictment is, um, huge!

I am trying to catch my breath after hearing some shattering news out of the Texas Panhandle.

I need to be very careful with what I say with this blog post.

A Randall County grand jury has indicted Sheriff Joel Richardson on a charge of “misuse of his position.” He faces prosecution on a second-degree felony. I saw this news and, to be honest, it took my breath away. I am utterly floored.

Nothing I have read offers any specifics about what the grand jury has determined to be worthy of prosecution. Thus, I cannot comment on the allegation.

I do want to make a couple of points, one about the sheriff and another about the process.

First, I long have considered Joel Richardson to be one of the finest law enforcement officials I’ve ever known. I got to know Richardson while I worked as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. He always has been a stand-up cop, a fine leader of men and women and is highly respected among his law enforcement peers. Richardson is not running for re-election this year.

Second, I served on a Randall County grand jury years ago. We would meet regularly and hear complaints brought to us by the district attorney’s office. None of the complaints we heard rose to anything approaching the level of what the current grand jury has delivered regarding Joel Richardson.

I can say this without hesitation: Grand juries do not indict people with Joel Richardson’s community standing without considering seriously the complaint that has been brought forward. I am not passing judgment on Richardson. I am saying that grand jurors take their responsibility seriously.

I want to believe in the sheriff.

Now, though, I need to catch my breath.

medical news

It’s official: I will ignore the return to ‘business as usual’

I am in dire need of a haircut. I miss cutting into a medium-rare steak at a nice restaurant. I want to return to the gym and to my daily workout regimen.

All of that is going to wait for the foreseeable future, no matter what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declares as he seeks to reopen the state for business.

He said hair salons are back in business. Gyms will reopen in a few days. Restaurants have been open for a few days now, although the governor ordered ’em to operate at 25 percent of capacity.

Fine. Go for it, y’all. I am staying away. I do not like seeing the news about infection and death rates continuing to climb in Texas, and in North Texas, where I live along with some members of my family. The picture isn’t any prettier in the Panhandle, where the rest of my family and many of our friends reside.

I haven’t checked in on the Golden Triangle, where my wife and I still have many dear friends.

From what I have read, polling suggests most Texans and other Americans believe as I do, that governors are acting too hastily to reopen their states. They are putting too much emphasis on the economy and not enough of it on the health of the people they represent.

Gov. Abbott has moved too quickly to suit my sensibilities. I am glad he had the good sense to close Texas public school classrooms for the rest of the academic year.

And what in the world is going on with our Texas public universities? They want to return to in-person classwork this fall. I’m OK with that … but Texas A&M, the University of Texas and Texas Tech University systems plan to play football. Are they going to play those games in empty stadiums? Yeah … good luck with that.

You may count me as one Texas resident who wants to see a substantial and recurring decline in the infection and death rates before I make my return to what we used to think of as “normal.”

Hey, maybe I can make a fashionably late entrance.

For now? I am out.

national news

What has happened to the GOP?

I posted an item on social media three years ago that asked a simple question.

What would Honest Abe, Teddy Roosevelt and Ike think of what’s become of the Republican Party? If only we could ask ’em.

I suppose I could add another great Republican. How about Ronald Reagan?

Donald Trump has managed to co-opt a once-great political party. The Grand Old Party has become the Gawd Awful Party under the leadership of an individual, Trump, who came into politics with no experience at any level of politics or public service.

He has turned the party into a cult of personality. It is most fascinating to me, given that he so openly expresses his respect and “love” for another individual who has turned an entire nation into a land full of cult of personality worshipers. Yep, that would be North Korea, led by Kim Jong Un, the overfed dictator who has managed to starve millions of his countrymen, women and children to death while he builds that massive military machine.

The party once known as the Republican Party never would have accepted the word of a Russian strongman over the nation’s intelligence experts, all of whom say the Russians attacked our election in 2016. The GOP never would have denigrated a Gold Star family who lost a son fighting for his country in Iraq. The former Republican Party never would have allowed any politician to disparage the heroism exhibited by one of its own senators during the Vietnam War.

And yet this carnival barker/con man/clown show emcee has gotten away with it. Why? Because the party he purports to lead allows him to carry on this hideous fashion.

Then this guy sits at the foot of the statue of President Lincoln, arguably the greatest president of all — let alone the greatest Republican in U.S. history — and says the media treat him worse than it did Honest Abe.

What passes for today’s GOP stands silently as this imposter denigrates a free press and the memory of a slain president.

business news

How about some ‘transparency,’ Mr. POTUS?

It’s the “t-word,” which means “transparency,” and it is fast becoming the latest overused term in the American political glossary of overused verbiage.

But it’s important. It means a lot to us as we look across the landscape and ponder the upcoming election for, oh, president of the United States.

The presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is facing allegations of sexual assault from a woman who said Biden attacked her in 1993. Her allegation isn’t holding up all that well upon closer scrutiny. Still, Tara Reade’s accusation needs to be “vetted” carefully, as Biden himself as stated.

He’s calling for transparency. That’s a good thing in my humble view.

Meanwhile, we have Biden’s opponent, the Republican president named Donald J. Trump. He’s got a boatload of accusations leveled against him. Have we vetted those accusations? Have we summoned those women forward to talk to us? No. Trump calls them liars and losers and other hideous names that seek to disparage them.

We need some transparency, Mr. President. He tells us on occasion that he’s the most transparent president in the U.S. history; then again, he’s the most everything in American political history.

He isn’t transparent. He hides, bobs and weaves, dissembles, and does all he can to avoid the kind of scrutiny that goes with holding the highest public office in the world’s most indispensable nation.

Oh, one more thing: those tax returns. Trump said he would release them after they go through a “routine audit.” The Internal Revenue Service said an audit doesn’t prevent anyone from releasing those returns, but Trump still hides behind that dodge.

He now vows to fight to keep them from public view. The Clown in Chief owes it to us. We need to look at this most public man’s books. We deserve to know if he is as rich as he boasts, whether he pays his share of taxes (which he demands of others) and whether there are any foreign influences on his business dealings that might have an impact on his public duties as president.

Transparency, Mr. President? Come clean on all of it.

national news

The non-pol sounds like a … pol!

It occurred to me a while ago, but I haven’t said so until right now, but the guy who campaigned for president of the United States as a non-politician is sounding like an actual politician … only he is so bad at playing the role of pol.

Donald Trump cannot resist the temptation to politicize everything, and that includes a pandemic that is infecting and killing thousands of Americans every day.

Now he says that Democratic-run states asking for federal help are doing harm to Republicans because those Democratic states have been “mismanaged for a long time.” Translation: They don’t deserve the help they are seeking from the feds.

What a cheap, petulant, petty and disgraceful point of view!

Donald Trump continues to exhibit his fundamental failure as a leader of a nation in the throes of a serious medical crisis.

The economy has tanked. We are entering Depression-era jobless reports. Businesses are declaring bankruptcy. And, yes, Americans are suffering grievously at almost every level imaginable.

Throughout all of this, Donald Trump speaks in terms of political outcomes and whether his own re-election campaign will rise or fall.

Yep, this is the non-pol who won election to the only public office he ever sought. He tried to sell us on the ruse that he was a self-made man, that he built this gigantic business empire all by his own self and that he would bring that expertise to the White House.

It turns out that was a lie. Imagine that.

He is now turning the blame machine on others. He failed to respond to repeated national security warnings about a pandemic. The dithered and dawdled. He looked the other way. Trump didn’t cause the pandemic and I won’t lay blame there.

However, he damn sure did accelerate the suffering by his non-response early on. Meanwhile, those “Democrat-run states” took proactive measures all on their own. They need the help from the federal government because — and this is the stark reality that Trump doesn’t understand — we’re all part of the same great nation.

Meanwhile, the non-politician plays politics.

Despicable.

economic news

How will POTUS react to the horrific job-loss news that’s coming?

You know by now the way Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump rolls.

He gets good news, he unlimbers his Twitter fingers to declare that only he could produce such joyous information; I can’t think of the last time he did it, but we all know that’s how he reacts.

What about the bad news? He still unlimbers the Twitter digits, but then declares that it’s someone else’s fault; Barack Obama is a favorite foil, given the intense envy he displays over Obama’s sophistication.

This brings me to the news that every economist in the country says is going to bring a huge gas around the world. The U.S. Labor Department will release the job figures for April. Projections tell us that in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, we’re going to experience a job loss of around 20 million. That number will dwarf the 710,000 non-farm jobs that disappeared in March as a result of the killer virus and the shutting down of the national economy.

I now am officially wondering how Trump is going to respond to that bit of hideous news.

This guy wants desperately to be re-elected this November. He had been touting the supposedly “historic” economic success he had enjoyed until the fecal matter hit the fan with the pandemic. What on Earth is he going to say when confronted with a jobless rate that is projected to exceed 15 percent.

I want to be clear. Donald Trump did not cause the pandemic. However, his clearly negligent initial (non)response to its severity has contributed mightily to the health and economic crises that have gripped the country by its throat.

He likely is going to find all manner of ways to blame others for his failure. My belief that he lacks what I call “presidential temperament” leads me to worry that he might go apoplectic.

When the March jobs report came out, we all knew it would get worse. I wasn’t aware at that time that it would plummet to the level we likely are about to witness.

We might need to get ready for a presidential implosion from Donald Trump.

State news

Beachgoers tempt fate

You are looking at a beachful of goobers who ought to know better than to do what they are doing.

They are congregating along the Texas coast, apparently heeding Gov. Greg Abbott’s declaration that it’s OK to venture to the beach without regard to the restrictions he had imposed on Texans since early April.

You can count me out. What in the world is going on here?

Planet Earth is still in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic. It has killed hundreds of thousands of people and nearly 70,000 Americans. Yet some states, such as Texas, are being run by governors who seem to think it’s OK to reopen their economies that had been shut down by the pandemic.

Abbott said he would let “doctors and data” determine how to loosen the restrictions. Did he really have this in mind? If he didn’t, then the goobers on the beach need to know better. If he did, these numbskulls still should pay attention.

Many governors are proclaiming that social distancing is having a profoundly positive effect on the infection and death rates by the COVID-19 virus. I don’t see a whole lot of social distancing in the picture I have attached to this blog post. What I do see is a crowd of nitwits who are endangering themselves or worse, endangering others.

What I wish would happen is that Abbott reimpose the restrictions. Good grief. He needs to tell those who want to go to the beach to follow the rules they have been following already.

Or, he could deputize Texas Parks & Wildlife rangers to work alongside Department of Public Safety troopers to issue citations to those they see clustering like these yahoos.

We are witnessing a rush to potential disaster and it gives my family me all the justification we need to keep doing what we’ve been doing to avoid getting caught by the killer virus.

Sports news

R.I.P., the great Don Shula

Don Shula has died at the age of 90.

He was a great National Football League coach. He led the Miami Dolphins to the only undefeated season in NFL history, coaching them to a 14-7 victory in the 1973 Super Bowl over the Washington Redskins. He would coach the Dolphins to a second straight Super Bowl victory the following year.

Now, I want to offer this little tidbit that has been lost as the pro football world has long saluted the greatness of Don Shula. I do not mean to disparage him.

But …

Don Shula also coached the Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl, the third such game pitting the NFL champs against the American Football League champs.

The Colts lost that game, 16-7, to the New York Jets, the team quarterbacked by that brash youngster Joe Namath who reportedly “guaranteed” that the Jets would beat the Colts and elevate the AFL to parity with the more established NFL.

I don’t recall whether the Colts were outcoached, or whether the Jets simply outplayed them.

Still, that one history-making loss did not do a single thing to diminish the great record — the winningest record in NFL history — that became the hallmark of Don Shula’s fabulous career.

R.I.P., Coach.

media news, national news

Kitchen is getting too hot for Trump

It’s a cliché, but it’s worth noting: If you can’t stand the heat, then get the hell out of the kitchen.

Donald John “Wartime President” Trump says he’s being treated worse by the media than any president in history. That includes Abraham Lincoln, a real wartime president who fought like the dickens to preserve the Union.

He succeeded. The fight cost him his life when a gunman killed him at Ford Theater in Washington, D.C.

Now, though, for Donald Trump to suggest the media treat him worse than what the press did to President Lincoln simply is beyond the pale.

Trump doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the media’s role in protecting us against government that is capable at times of reaching too far and, yes, of making egregious mistakes.

Do you think Trump has made any such mistakes during his three years as president? I most assuredly believe that’s the case.

Trump spoke at a Fox News town hall. A woman asked him why he doesn’t answer reporters’ direct questions on the coronavirus pandemic. According to The Hill: “I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said, sitting in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. “The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They said Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.” 

Cry me a bleeping river, Mr. President.

The media are doing what the Constitution allows them to do. No amount of bullying, intimidation, coercion or threats from the president or his lackeys should throw them off their mission.

Every presidential predecessor — all of whom had to endure negative coverage — has understood that it all goes with the job to which they were elected.

Until this clown.