Monthly Archives: May 2020

local news

Motorcyclists using common sense

I want to report a satisfactory finding I discovered this morning while running an errand into McKinney and then back to Princeton, Texas.

The other day I griped about Texas rescinding its mandatory motorcycle helmet law back in 1997. The Legislature decided, to its discredit, that requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets was intrusive, that Texans had some sort of constitutional right to injure or kill themselves in the event of a catastrophic traffic accident. Oh, never mind the cost of such debilitating injury on the overall health care system … which falls on the rest of us.

Well, while running my errand I decided to observe every motorcyclist I saw this morning and whether they were wearing helmets.

This is purely anecdotal, but I saw the following: 14 motorcyclists on the road; two of them had passengers on the rear seat. All of them were helmeted. 

I was reminded of a pair of quirky electoral decisions that occurred in Amarillo about a decade ago. Voters twice rejected citywide referenda mandating a ban on indoor smoking in public places. Unlike many cities in Texas, the city council declined to issue an ordinance requiring a ban, even though it is proven that breathing second-hand smoke is bad for our health. Today, though, it is nearly impossible to find a dining or drinking establishment that allows smoking, which tells me that business owners in Amarillo are doing the right thing … all by themselves.

So, too, it might be with motorcyclists, if my anecdotal finding is playing out in the rest of the state.

I still would favor a law requiring helmets on motorcyclists. However, absent a law, I want to give a shout out to those bikers who understand the foolishness of tempting fate by riding a crotch rocket through traffic without proper noggin protection.

national news

Thoughts from a former staffer put Biden issue in perspective

I have received permission from a longtime colleague and a professional source — who has become a friend now that we’re “civilians” — to share some thoughts about the sexual assault allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden.

My friend is Elaine Lang Cornett, who served as press secretary for the late U.S. Rep. Charles Wilson, an East Texas Democrat and arguably one of the more colorful and effective members of Congress in the past 100 years.

Elaine is casting doubt on the allegation leveled by Tara Reade that Biden sexually assaulted her. Elaine writes:

I have two observations on this story based on my time working in a congressional office. In 1993 the Hill was deep into the sexual harassment allegations against Sen. Bob Packwood. This would include any and all HR departments to report problems. If there was any whisper of an allegation against Biden at that time, it would have surfaced. I can speak to this since I was the press secretary in my office, and fielded phone calls about this issue several times a week. Also, I walked (and sometime ran) through every hallway under the Capitol during the 15 years I worked there and there was no corridor in the basement catacombs where there would have been enough privacy for the events described. These were heavily trafficked passageways used to move from building to building and also were the location of many support offices. I have been skeptical since this story started to percolate. 

OK. I’ll take her word for it. My friend always shot straight with me while I worked for the Beaumont Enterprise and her boss was representing the Second Congressional District of East Texas.

It’s good to keep many aspects of this allegation — which Biden has denied categorically and emphatically — in its proper perspective.

International news

Canadian PM acts decisively on guns; no 2nd Amendment to block him

What has just occurred in Canada cannot happen in the United States of America, but I have to tell you that I wish somehow that we could follow the Canadian model on how to stem gun violence.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced an immediate ban on the sale and use of assault-style weapons in the wake of a Nova Scotia shooting that killed 22 victims in April.

That means you can’t own an AR-15, or an M-16 or an AK-47. Period.

As The Associated Press reported: “Canadians need more than thoughts and prayers,” he said, rejecting the reaction of many politicians after mass shootings.

Trudeau cited numerous mass shootings in the country, including the rampage that killed 22 in Nova Scotia April 18 and 19. He announced the ban of over 1,500 models and variants of assault-style firearms, including two guns used by the gunman as well as the AR-15 and other weapons that have been used in a number of mass shootings in the United States.

I am left to say, merely, “Wow!”

The Canadians don’t have a constitution that contains an amendment that guarantees that the “right to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” That gives the prime minister a clear path to take unilateral action.

Spare me the dogma associated with gun-owner rights. I do not want to move to Canada. I am a proud American patriot who believes in the U.S. Constitution, including the Second Amendment that guarantees gun ownership.

However, I remain baffled, bamboozled and blown away (no pun intended) by our inability to legislate any kind of modest gun reform that could prevent the sort of carnage through which we suffer with alarming frequency.

The AP reports: Trudeau said the weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time.

“Today we are closing the market for military-grade assault weapons in Canada,” he said.

Owners of these weapons use them for that purpose here, as well, yet our political structure is hamstrung by fealty to the Second Amendment and the inability or unwillingness of politicians to buck the gun lobby.

But here we are with two nations of comparable physical size, but with huge differences in population. They also are governed by vastly different documents and precepts.

We need not be held hostage in this country by gun lobbyists. I continue to believe there exists a legislative solution to gun violence that keeps faith with what the founders wrote when they drafted the Second Amendment to our beloved Constitution.

national news

Trump channels Charlottesville terrorists?

Some folks in Michigan got so angry this week that they stormed into the State Capitol building in Lansing, packing AR-15s, M-4s and AK-47s — assault weapons — and demanded that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reopen the state’s business community.

Yep, they assaulted one of our bastions of representative democracy!

And what was the response from the president of the United States? Donald Trump wants Gov. Whitmer to negotiate with them.

According to The Guardian: “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk t them, make a deal.”

That statement came from Trump. I couldn’t help but think of what he said about the neo-Nazis, KKK members and white supremacists who confronted officials in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017; they instigated a riot over the taking down of Confederate statues, and a young woman was killed. Trump told us then that there were “very fine people, on both sides.”

Whitmer along with governors in many other states had shut down businesses and government offices in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 65,000 Americans and sickened more than 1 million of us. Whitmer is frightened of what the illness could do to the people she was elected to serve, so she acted.

Now we have demonstrators threatening the halls of power, brandishing weaponry into the State Capitol.

The president’s response was, quite naturally, disgraceful. He didn’t condemn the demonstrators for their show of intimidation. He didn’t counsel them to resist that kind of obnoxiousness. Trump didn’t pitch a more restrained response. Oh, no. He endorsed the mob scene; he gave them strength to continue their protests to lift the stay at home orders, the shelter in place restrictions, the social distancing that has proven to be effective in stemming the spread of the viral infection.

This isn’t leadership. Donald Trump is fomenting anger among a minority of Americans who are able to lift their voices above the majority of us who are concerned that governors in many states — such as Texas — might be moving too rapidly to “return to normal.”

national news

Biden faces growing scrutiny … as if he hasn’t faced it already?

There’s something we should know about Joseph R. Biden Jr., as he prepares to take the Democratic Party presidential nomination to run against Donald Trump for the presidency.

It is that this man who’s now in his late 70s has been standing in the middle of the national spotlight since before he turned 30 years of age.

Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. He now faces allegations from a woman who has accused him of sexual assault in 1993, when he was a veteran U.S. senator from Delaware.

When and why did the national spotlight start shining on this fellow?

He ran for the Senate in 1972. He was elected to that seat before he was old enough to qualify to hold it; the U.S. Constitution says one must be at least 30 years of age to serve in the Senate, but Biden was 29 at the time of his election, but would turn 30 before he took the oath of office.

Then tragedy struck. His wife and daughter were killed in a traffic accident. The young senator-elect considered bowing out, thought about not serving. He was crushed, heartbroken. His allies talked into serving. So he took the oath with the spotlight shining brightly on him from the very beginning of his Senate career.

Biden took office as a single father to two young sons. He commuted back and forth daily between Capitol Hill and his home in Delaware. The nation continued to follow his emotional journey.

He found love again. Sen. Biden married his wife, Jill. They produced a daughter. Their love story became one of Washington’s ongoing feel-good sagas.

And so, with that tragedy behind, with his newfound love, his reputation as a champion for women’s rights on the line, we now are being asked to believe he would squander all of that by attacking Tara Reade, one of the senator’s staffers?

This one strains credulity. Yes, I know there are other stories of politicians who portray themselves as loving family men only to be revealed as cads, philanderers and moral alley cats. I think at this moment of former Sen. John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat who cheated on his cancer-stricken wife with a woman who would give birth to his child.

Joe Biden isn’t the perfect man. No one can make a claim to perfection. Is he capable of throwing away a lifetime in politics and public service with an astonishingly stupid act such as what has been alleged?

I don’t think so.

national news

Biden faces stern test of his character

Well now, an interview that Joe Biden thought might quash concerns about a sexual assault allegation likely has done nothing of the sort.

The former two-term vice president of the United States and presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president has been accused by former Biden staffer Tara Reade of sexually assaulting her. Reade says that in 1993 Biden pinned her against a wall and groped her.

Biden went on the air this morning to deny categorically the allegation. He told MSBNC’s Mika Brzezinski that the incident never happened. He didn’t question Reade’s motives. Biden said no one on his staff ever reported anything resembling what Reade has alleged.

Furthermore, Biden today announced he has asked the secretary of the U.S. Senate to obtain personnel records from the National Archives that would contain any formal complaint that Reade might have filed and release them to the public. Biden said the archived record would contain nothing of what Reade has alleged.

Is that good enough? Will it quell the questions? Will it stop Donald Trump’s slime machine from kicking into high gear? Hah! No to all of it!

I am inclined to believe Biden, but you likely have assumed that already. Fine, assume all you want. I also believe we need to examine fully the veracity of what Tara Reade has alleged and come to a conclusion on its validity.

Yes, this episode has the sort of echo that resonated when Christine Blasey Ford alleged sexual misconduct by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when the two of them were much younger. Ford got her public hearing, as did Kavanaugh. The U.S. Senate confirmed Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and the story of what she alleged has more or less gone dormant.

Meanwhile, the president of the United States has been accused by more than 20 women of assorted acts of sexual misbehavior. Donald Trump has denied all of it; he has called the women liars and worse. Accordingly, he has suggested that Reade’s allegation might be as false as the accusations he has said were leveled against him. Of course, we have heard that hideous recording of Trump regaling “Access Hollywood” about how he sought to have sex with a married woman and how his celebrity status allowed him to grab women by their genitals. What a guy.

Whatever. This matter needs a resolution.

My own belief is that Joe Biden has been a national political figure since the moment he was sworn into the Senate in 1973. He took office under the most extreme duress imaginable, having lost his wife and daughter in a tragic auto accident in late 1972.

He and his second wife, Jill Biden, have been at the forefront of any number of social issues, involving protection against women facing sexual assault. Therefore, I would be astonished beyond all measure to learn that Joe Biden — of all people — would have behaved in the hideous manner that Tara Reade has alleged.

Let’s get to the truth.

medical news

VP dons a mask … how ’bout that?

REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

A healthy dose of public scorn is good for the conscience, isn’t that right, Vice President Mike Pence?

The VP showed up earlier this week at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to talk to patients and staff members at the renowned research and teaching hospital. He flouted a Mayo policy requiring everyone in the building to wear a mask to protect against the coronavirus.

The public recrimination was stern and highly justified. Pence’s lame response was ridiculed.

OK. Then he goes to a General Motors plant and, bingo! He dons a mask right along with everyone else.

The veep didn’t look silly. He didn’t look unmanly. He looked as though he was following the rules.

Lesson learned? I hope so … but somehow, my doubts remain.

economic news, medical news

Trump ought to call those who have lost loved ones to the pandemic

Donald Trump isn’t wired to show compassion.

He doesn’t grieve openly. He won’t be seen wiping tears from his eyes. The president is too preoccupied with “making America great again,” and “telling it like it is.”

Donald Trump finds himself concocting rosy scenarios where none exists. He is separating himself from the suffering that is occurring in rural America and in our inner cities. He doesn’t seem interested in dealing on a personal basis with those who are suffering untold heartbreak.

As The New York Times reports: As he presides over the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic collapse, Mr. Trump has hosted o called many people affected by the devastation, including health company executives, sports commissioners, governors, cruise ship company heads, religious leaders, telecommunications executives and foreign heads of state. One category that has to make his list: Americans who have lost someone to the pandemic.

I will not hold breath waiting to hear from anyone of those victims out here who has received a phone call from Donald Trump.

Trump’s failures as a leader are becoming even more evident than they were already. Many of us knew he lacked the compassion gene, or the gene that enables him to hurt along with the country. It’s just that watching all this play out in real time remains a sight to see.

While the country’s death toll soars past 60,000 individuals, Trump launches Twitter tirades and chastises: CNN, Democratic politicians, the media in general, China, MSNBC, Fox News. He can’t even take time on Twitter to say how profoundly sorry he is to hear about the misery that millions of Americans are feeling.

They are hurting because they have lost their jobs. Their loved ones have died from the viral infection. Their businesses are withering.

Donald Trump’s reaction? It is to blame others for his own failures and to lie about what a “fantastic” job he and his team are doing.

Sickening.

national news

COVID death toll = Vietnam War death toll

Elements of this image furnished by NASA

I have been trying to connect two sets of numbers and I must admit to finding difficulty in determining the relevance of one to the other.

It was 45 years ago today when the Vietnam War ended. The helicopters lifted off the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, carrying refugees and remaining U.S. Marines and embassy staff. The war was over. North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon and the communists renamed the city after the late Ho Chi Minh.

More than 58,000 American servicemen and women and died in that war over the span of about 12 years. We now have lost more than 62,000 Americans to the COVID-19 virus and many observers have sought to link the two casualty counts.

What I reckon is most troubling is that Donald Trump — who aggressively sought to avoid taking part in the Vietnam War — now calls himself a “wartime president” leading a nation in the fight against what he describes as an “invisible enemy.”

Is that the relevant link? Hmm. Maybe.

I just have to conclude that Trump has failed to act like a wartime president. He has failed to provide anything that remotely falls into the category of national leader. He continues to provide happy talk about the “fantastic” work he says he and his team are doing; he trots out his know-nothing son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to proclaim laughably that the federal response is a “great success story.”

Perhaps that also provides some relevance between the Vietnam War and the current “war” against the coronavirus. Generals and politicians in the 1960s sought to persuade Americans that we were “winning” the Vietnam War. Presidents Johnson and Nixon lied to Americans; they instructed their military commanders to lie as well. If we move to the present day, we hear another president lie to us daily about the “success” we are experiencing.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump does not take more than 10 seconds per public pronouncement to speak at all about the human suffering that is unfolding in real time. He is failing to demonstrate any form of compassion or empathy, an unwritten but clearly understood part of the presidential job description.

The relevance between these two historical events — Vietnam and the current pandemic — can be found, I suppose, in the deceptions we were fed then and are being fed now.