Monthly Archives: May 2020

national news

Needing to understand Trump’s grip on his ‘base’

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

I never have professed to know everything about everything.

Some things escape me. They sit perched beyond my ability to grasp certain aspects of human thinking. One of those things involves Donald John Trump, who does profess to know everything about everything, but who in reality is a dunce who cannot admit it.

This brings me to my query: How in the world does Donald Trump’s base of voters defend the conduct of this individual who to my way of thinking exhibits an astonishing example of unfitness for the job he holds.

I have many social media acquaintances — some of whom are actual friends of mine in real life — who cling to this idiot’s world view … such as it is! Maybe they can explain a few things to me.

I am left to ponder so many examples of crassness, boorishness, cruelty from this clown. How do these folks stand with a guy who:

Defames a talk show host by suggesting — without a shred of evidence — that he played a role in the death of a trusted aide when that talk show host served in Congress and drags the family of the young staffer through more grief?

Alleges that a former president of the United States committed an illegal act, again without any evidence?

Suggests the former president, Barack Obama, should be thrown in jail?

Denigrates the service of a war hero, the late Sen. John McCain, and then continues to criticize him as he fights a disease that eventually would took his life?

Mocks a reporter with a serious physical handicap?

Criticizes a Gold Star family — that happens to be Muslim — whose son died while fighting for this country in Iraq?

Admits to grabbing women by their genitals, admits to philandering on his wives and admits to seeking to do so immediately after his third wife gave birth to his fifth child?

Donald Trump is unfit at any and every level to make decisions as president of the United States. He was elected in 2016 partly because he sold Americans a bill of goods about his business background.

And now here we are. We are struggling against a global pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 Americans. Many thousands more of us will die. He should focus solely on the effort to stem the infection. What does he do instead? He takes to Twitter virtually 24/7 to foment lies about his political foes and to disparage others who choose to wear masks as a way to protect themselves and others against a potentially fatal viral infection.

Trump’s base of voters continues to stand with the Nimrod in Chief for reasons that escape me. I want to understand a little better that line of so-called “thinking.”

Bear in mind that I won’t change my own mind about his unfitness for the office he occupies. I just want to learn something.

national news

What kind of lowlife would do this?

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I just cannot stop shaking my head in utter disgust.

Donald Trump continues to exhibit the traits of a disgraceful, despicable lowlife capable of defaming the characters of those with whom he has mere political disagreements.

His latest target happens to be an MSNBC talk show host, Joe Scarborough, a former Republican member of Congress who has since become a Trump critic.

The president of the United States of America has suggested several times openly that Scarborough had a hand in the death of a former congressional aide. Donald Trump has said Scarborough was responsible for the death of Lori Kaye Klausutis. Authorities have debunked anything of the sort.

Trump, though, keeps pitching that scurrilous lie. Not only is he seeking to harm the reputation of Joe Scarborough, Trump is brining untold suffering and pain to Klausutis’ family. Her widower has called on Trump to cease and desist. So has Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney, who has said “enough already” with the defamatory rhetoric.

When reporters ask Trump about the lie he keeps fomenting, he falls back on that lame “many people have said” defense.

To think, therefore, that this piece of sh** politician managed to get elected to the highest office in the land and that the individual masquerading as our head of state is continuing to conduct himself in such a reprehensible manner … while he should be focused exclusively on putting down a global pandemic that has killed 100,000 Americans.

Lori Kaye’s husband, T.J. Klausutis, has asked Twitter to take Trump’s tweets down. “I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” he wrote in a letter to Twitter. To date, the social medium has not done so, but it has put warnings out about the lies that Trump keeps fomenting.

Donald Trump is sickening in the extreme.

national news

It isn’t ‘political correctness,’ Mr. POTUS

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A reporter stood before Donald Trump today to pose a question; he said he had to speak loudly because he was wearing a surgical mask.

“You’re being politically correct,” Trump told the reporter, speaking in that dismissive tone he uses to discuss measures people are taking to avoid being sickened by the coronavirus.

The reporter answered that he was merely being cautious, that he doesn’t want to catch the killer virus.

And so it goes on and on with the Dipsh** in Chief, who continues to dismiss the wearing of masks as a preventative measure by Americans.

Trump won’t wear one in public. He says a mask makes him “look ridiculous.” He poked fun today at his likely election opponent, Democrat Joseph R. Biden, for wearing a mask during Memorial Day services in Delaware. Biden was asked by a CNN reporter whether wearing  mask is a sign of “strength” or “weakness.”

Joe Biden’s answer? It’s a sign of “leadership.” Bingo!

Donald Trump has failed every leadership test he has ever taken since becoming a politician.

Oh! There’s this: The disease that would in Donald Trump’s words disappear “miraculously” when we had recorded 15 cases is about to claim its 100,000th fatality.

national news

Oh, the dilemma is maddening

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I am faced at this moment with the most vexing political dilemma I have encountered since I first became eligible to vote.

That was in 1972. I had just returned from active duty in the Army. The 26th amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1971. I got to vote! Cool!

Now it’s 48 years later and I am trying to stare down this dilemma. It goes like this:

I am torn between wanting the economy and the nation’s health to recover from the global pandemic that is going to kill thousands more Americans while also wanting to remove Donald John Trump from the office of president of the United States.

The dilemma forms because Donald Trump would find a way to take credit for the nation recovering from the pandemic when, in my view, he has done damn near nothing to bring about a welcome conclusion to the crisis.

The economy might start to rebound later this year. Or it might continue to crater. Americans might no longer be stricken with the viral infection called COVID-19, or we might continue to get sick and die at a shocking and tragic rate.

Do I want the worst to occur? Of course not! I want there to be a full return to economic vitality and I certainly want an end to the misery, the grief and the tragic loss of life we are enduring at this moment.

However, a return to economic and physical vitality is likely going to produce a blizzard of self-aggrandizing and misleading (at the very least) pronouncements from the Nimrod in Chief about how “none of this could have occurred without me as your president.”

Perhaps the strangest aspect of it all is that millions of Americans are going to guzzle the swill that this con man would deliver.

Would a happy ending produce a Donald Trump re-election? I shudder at the thought. In my humble view, this individual — through his initial dawdling and dismissiveness about the pandemic — is responsible for more of the misery than he ever will acknowledge.

He deserves to be booted out of office.

local news

What happened to ‘local control is best’?

I am still steamed at the Texas Legislature for wrestling away from cities in the state the ability to enact ordinances aimed at protecting motorists and pedestrians who venture onto our public streets.

The 2019 Legislature decided it had earned enough griping from motorists bitching about a phony notion that they were unable to “face their accuser” and ordered cities to no longer deploy cameras at intersections to catch motorists running through red lights.

You know, of course, that red lights mean “stop.” Too many Texans choose to ignore that command, so they run through the intersections. They have in many cities produced spikes in “t-bone” crashes, resulting in serious injury and death.

An earlier Legislature decided to give cities that right. Many of them did. I lived in a city that deployed red-light cameras. Amarillo, though, was forced to take them down because of legislative edict. I now live in a city, Princeton, that doesn’t govern itself under a home-rule charter, so it must follow state law where it applies; absent a home-rule charter, Princeton couldn’t have activated red-light cameras even if it sought to do so.

My wife and I have just returned from a brief visit to Amarillo. Our visit there reminded me once again of the fight that ensued when the city council showed some serious courage in enacting the ordinance that resulted in red-light cameras. The city traffic engineer and police department had identified intersections where red-light runners had caused undue havoc, mayhem and misery. They deployed the cameras and, lo and behold, they found that the cameras deterred lawbreakers.

One of the chief complaints came from those who said the cameras denied motorists the right to face their accuser. Baloney!

The cameras snapped a picture of the license plate of the offending vehicle; the city then identified the owner of the vehicle and sent him or her a $75 infraction notice. It then fell on the owner of the vehicle to pay the fine, or get whoever was driving the vehicle to pay it or they could protest it to the municipal judge.

Well, that’s all history now. I recall fondly the statement made in public by then-City Councilwoman Ellen Green, who scolded red-light camera opponents by declaring in essence, that all they had to do to was “stop running red lights.”

Shameful.

Whatever happened to the noble principle that “local control is better” than big government?

media news

Worried about future of journalism in a city I love

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My concern about the future of newspaper journalism in a city my wife and I once called “home” is building. I am unsure of how or where this concern will end up. Suffice to say I cannot shake this feeling of doom for the future of the Amarillo Globe-News.

I do not read the daily print newspaper. I no longer reside in Amarillo. I do try to read the “paper” online, but I need to subscribe to it. I decline to do so. Why? There’s not enough news about the Texas Panhandle to interest me.

The Globe-News is now owned by Gannett Corp., the company that merged with GateHouse Media; GateHouse assumed control of Gannett, but kept the Gannett name. Gannett is known throughout the newspaper industry as a cost-cutting juggernaut. It seeks to “save its way to prosperity.” From what I have seen for many years now, through three corporate ownerships, the Globe-News has been slashed, decimated and reduced to a newsgathering organization that is just a mere shadow of what is used to be.

The most troubling thing I see in the online edition is a heavy reliance on news from down south, in Lubbock, where Gannett also operates a newspaper.

My point is this: I see a lot of news relating to Texas Tech University on the front page of the Globe-News’ online edition. Texas Tech is a fine school, but it is headquartered in Lubbock. It has a decent presence in Amarillo, but its influence there remains somewhat muted.

Conversely, when I look at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s online edition, I never see news covering Amarillo or the Texas Panhandle. Do you get my drift? If not, it is merely that the influence flows only in one direction, from Lubbock to Amarillo.

I am left to wonder whether there will even be an Amarillo Globe-News in the future. The newspaper used to employ dozens of reporters, line editors and photographers. It now employs a single sports writer, two general-assignment reporters, a regional executive editor and a regional director of commentary.

That … is … it!

The grumbling I hear from my many friends in Amarillo all say the same thing. The newspaper doesn’t report the news.

It saddens me terribly.

I want desperately to be wrong about the future of print journalism in the Texas Panhandle.

national news

Did POTUS make an unintended admission?

Donald Trump now says the man he selected to be attorney general, Jeff Sessions, didn’t have the mental capacity to do the job.

That’s now the president’s description of Jeff Sessions, who had the bad taste — and the good sense — to recuse himself from an investigation examining whether the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral system in 2016.

Sessions did the right thing and for that he now is being vilified by the president who vowed to surround himself with the “best people” were he elected to office four years ago.

Has Trump now offered an implied admission that Sessions wasn’t among the “best people”? Did The Donald due sufficient due diligence in looking for an attorney general? If not, then why not? If he did, then why has Trump changed his mind about the quality of the guy he nominated to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer?

Trump offered the criticism of Sessions in an interview with Sheryl Attkisson. “He’s not mentally qualified to be Attorney General,” Trump said. “He was the biggest problem. I mean, look Jeff Sessions put people in place that were a disaster.”

Trump now wants Sessions to lose the upcoming GOP primary runoff in Alabama for the U.S. Senate seat. He has endorsed Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn University football coach. The winner will face Sen. Doug Jones in the fall election.

I just am astonished as I read and hear Trump talk about men and women he selects to these key jobs, who then decide to do the right thing … and then become unqualified, unfit to the job to which they were selected.

Trump’s ad hominem attacks on these individuals tell me far more about him than they ever say about the men and women he denigrates.

Among the messages I get from these attacks is that Donald Trump doesn’t know what he is doing.

national news

Trump might demand a GOP convention change of venue?

Donald John “Bully in Chief” Trump keeps looking for ways, it seems to me, to prove how incompetent, shallow and self-serving he can be.

Consider what he is threatening to do: He is now threatening to force a change of venue for the Republican National Convention from Charlotte, N.C. to move to another location at the last minute. His reason is a stunner.

He says North Carolina’s governor, Roy Cooper — who happens to be a Democrat — needs to declare its OK for GOP conventioneers to gather in the convention arena to cheer Donald Trump’s nomination for president.

Except that Gov. Cooper isn’t ready to make that declaration. He isn’t ready to say that the convention hall will be safe to stuff thousands of people under one roof while the nation fights the coronavirus pandemic.

I will stand with the governor on this one. No surprise there, right?

Still, Gov. Cooper is seeking to protect North Carolinians and those who are venturing to his state to take part in a presidential nominating convention.

What is troubling to me is that Trump would seek to coerce a governor who — along with his colleagues of both political parties — is trying to wrestle this killer virus into submission. Trump’s overarching concern is producing images of cheering convention attendees which, of course, he could use to boost his re-election chances.

Why not conduct a “virtual” convention, which is under serious consideration by the Democratic National Committee? The DNC is hoping to stage its convention in Milwaukee, Wisc., prior to the RNC’s event. However, as has become the norm in this fight against COVID-19, Democrats appear to err more on the side of health concern than their Republican colleagues … although I am certain GOP operatives are concerned about people’s health.

They’re just equally concerned about how to ensure Donald Trump’s re-election.

And the president is seeking to throw his weight around on an issue that well could put more Americans at risk.

Unbelievable!

science news

Looking forward to this launch

It has been a good while since I’ve felt this kind of excitement preceding the launch of a rocket ship … but here it is.

They’re going to fire a rocket into space on Wednesday with two astronauts aboard. The launch will occur at Cape Canaveral, Fla. The rocket will be a Space-X ship and it will take place under the auspices of NASA, the U.S. space agency. The rocket will ferry the astronauts to the International Space Station.

It’s been more than a decade that U.S. astronauts have launched from an American launch pad. We have been flying Americans into space aboard ships launched from Russia.

The Space-X launch is a big deal in that it signals a potential return of manned space flight in the nation was able to put men on the moon, was able to set many space-flight records.

I plan to watch the launch when it occurs Wednesday.

My excitement over this launch is beginning to remind me of how excited I used to get when I was a boy. I would awaken every morning during the Mercury space program of the 1960s. I would watch and wait — and then wait some more during the delays — with my mother. We would cheer the Redstone rockets as they lifted off the pad. They graduated to the Atlas rockets for the orbital flights. Eventually we would cheer the monstrous Saturn rockets as they hurled astronauts toward the moon.

I certainly got excited during the launch of the initial space shuttle launches, beginning in April 1981 when the Columbia took off with John Young and Robert Crippen aboard.

The shuttle program ended. Since then we have relied on the Russians to take our men and women into space.

Now we’re getting back into the space game with the Space-X ship set to take off.

I’ll be in front of the TV … cheering the launch just like the old days.

national news

Put partisan politics aside to fight the pandemic … please!

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We are living in perilous times in light of the pandemic that is sweeping around the globe and has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.

OK, that is no flash on the part of this blog and your friendly blogger. Still, the idea needs a bit of fleshing out.

One would have thought — or could have thought — that a pandemic on the scale of the COVID -19 crisis could unite a nation that is divided sharply along partisan lines.

Democrats and Republicans dislike and even detest each other. We need a reason to unite. I would have thought that a pandemic that kills Republicans and Democrats with equal malice would do the trick. It isn’t happening.

Who’s to blame for the continuing partisan pi**ing match? I’ll declare my view: The blame belongs to Donald John “Demagogue in Chief” Trump.

The president takes an oath that compels him to unify the nation when crisis strikes. Past presidents have risen to the task: Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor was bombed; George W. Bush after 9/11. Donald Trump and the coronavirus pandemic? He has picked fights with Democratic governors, Democratic members of Congress, the media … you name ’em, he’s fought ’em.

Trump bristles at the idea that voting by mail is an alternative to traditional balloting. Why? He dismisses the fear that traditional voting would expose Americans to the virus and concocts a phony fear of “rampant voter fraud” if we allow all-mail voting. He threatens to withhold federal aid to Democrat-governed states if they proceed with mail-in voting.

We shouldn’t be fighting partisan battles when we’re supposed to focus on the viral infection that kills Americans with no regard to whether they are Democrat or Republican.

It appears to me that we are locked in a hopeless divide that is growing perhaps too wide for a worldwide health crisis to bridge. If only Donald Trump could learn to abide by the oath he took when he became president of the United States.

What an utter shame.