Monthly Archives: May 2020

medical news

WHO gets the shaft

Let me see if I can follow this matter that so far more or less escapes me.

The world is locked in a deadly pandemic brought to us by the coronavirus. It has killed 93,000 Americans — and counting. The United States is trying to corral the viral infection, with little success.

Other nations are suffering grievously as well.

So what does Donald John Trump threaten to do? He said he might pull all U.S. funding resources from the World Health Organization, the United Nations-sponsored health agency that many nations rely on to provide medical expertise that it brings to bear … particularly in times such as this!

Trump is angry at WHO because he alleges the agency has been too friendly with China, where Trump keeps saying is the source of the coronavirus. WHO did nothing, he says, to help stem the tide of the infection.

So he wants to punish WHO by pulling all U.S. money from its coffers. It’s a huge hit that Trump wants to deliver to WHO.

I am one American who believes that the World Health Organization’s role is invaluable. The docs and other scientists who work for WHO provide plenty of expertise, guidance and counsel for the rest of the world to heed.

It also provides all manner of research for possible cures for diseases such as the one that’s killing Americans and other human beings every hour of every day.

So … with a pandemic still raging, the president of the United States wants to strip WHO clean? Idiotic.

national news

Looking ahead to a brighter day

I like playing a mind game that enables me to look ahead to the short- or the medium-term future. I don’t have a name for it … but what the hey!

The game I am playing at the moment involves the moment when Donald Trump walks away from the presidency. It could happen Jan. 20, 2021 or (gulp!) on Jan. 20, 2025. Oh, how I want it to be the first date.

But still, Donald Trump has become — in addition to being the most unqualified, unfit and uninformed person ever elected president — a first-class, top-tier boor. His treatment of others has become almost legendary in its crassness.

So what might happen at the moment the new president takes over from Trump? The transition from one president to another is filled with niceties, photo opportunities, pro forma courtesies. Let’s assume for a moment that the new president will be Joseph R. Biden Jr., the 2020 Democratic nominee-in-waiting.

In a normal political environment, Joseph Biden and his wife, Jill, would go to the White House. The first couple, Donald and Melania Trump, would greet them. They would exchange some small talk, pose for pictures, then go inside for some more chatter, perhaps have a meal.

This campaign, though, will be far from “normal.” It will be as abnormal as it can get. Trump will sling epithets and baseless accusations at Biden. The former vice president will fire back with his own attacks. Trump won’t like the things Biden says about him and he’ll ratchet up the rhetoric.

How low it stoops is anyone’s guess.

Then there will be the inaugural ceremony. The new vice president and the president take their oaths of office, then the president — and I do hope it’s Biden — will begin his remarks. In a more genteel time, the new president would turn to the outgoing president and thank him for his service to the country. My favorite moment of that nature occurred in 1977 when President Carter turned to President Ford — whom he had defeated in a bruising campaign — and thanked “my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land” after Watergate.

It is difficult for me to believe we will witness any of that kind of dignity and decorum whenever Donald Trump’s time as president has expired. This individual has poisoned the atmosphere.

Ugh!

national news

‘No statues … will defile our public spaces’

What you see attached to this brief blog post is a Twitter message attributed to George Conway.

In case you don’t know who he is, Conway is married to Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s most trusted senior policy advisers.

George Conway is a high-powered, hard-hitting Washington lawyer, a noted conservative and someone who I guess you could describe as a “Never Trumper.” George Conway has been savaging Donald Trump almost daily since the POTUS took office in 2017.

To be candid, the thoughts expressed in this message mirror precisely the kind of feelings I have been harboring for, oh, ever since Trump became a politician.

I am not going to declare categorically that this came from George Conway. I merely want to endorse the message it delivers.

Donald Trump will be “remembered but never honored.”

Brutal … but true!

national news

Pompeo ‘didn’t know’ IG was examining him? Seriously?

There are claims that this was for retaliation, for some investigation that the inspector general’s office here was engaged in. Patently false. I have no sense of what investigations were taking place inside the inspector general’s office.

The above statement came from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said he recommended that Donald John “The Idiot in Chief” Trump fire inspector general Steve Linick. He said he should have had Linick fired a long time ago.

Why? Because, according to Pompeo, Linick was doing a lousy job and that he — Pompeo — had lost “confidence” in him.

So now the nation’s top diplomat wants us to believe that he had no idea that Linick was looking into alleged abuses of his office relating to duties being performed for members of the Pompeo family, or that the secretary of state was engaging in a reportedly shady arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

This is the secretary of state! The man’s got his fingers on all sorts of national security buttons. He wants us to believe he didn’t know what the IG — who was assigned specifically to work within the State Department — was doing?

Good grief! Pompeo must think we’re all a bunch of rubes out here. Or he is as much of a pathological liar as the man to whom he answers, Donald Trump.

I tend to believe it’s the latter.

national news

More, not fewer, voters make democracy work

One of the obligatory editorials I would write back when I was a working stiff involved seeking to get voters to get off their duffs and do their duty as citizens of this great country.

Their duty involved voting. One of the arguments I sought to make at three newspapers where I wrote these opinion pieces was a straightforward one: More voters, not fewer of them, create a stronger democratic system.

Thus, when I hear arguments from mostly Republican officials who want to suppress voter participation, why, it just infuriates me to no end.

GOP officials in Texas and elsewhere are flinging the red herring about “rampant voter fraud” by opposing mail-in voting. What they really intend to do is to prevent voters from casting ballots particularly in this frightening moment … with the world reeling from the global coronavirus pandemic.

This bit of idiocy even came from the nation’s No. 1 Republican, Donald “Imbecile in Chief” Trump, who said mail-in voting — in addition to promoting voter fraud — would doom Republicans from getting elected. Keep that in mind. I’ll get back to that.

A federal judge recently ruled that Texans who fear coming down with the COVID-19 virus by voting in person on Election Day are free to cast their ballots by mail; the U.S. Fifth Circuit of Appeals, though, put the brakes on the judge’s ruling. So we’re now back to Square One.

Republicans in Texans, led by Attorney General Ken Paxton, appear more frightened at the prospect of more voters taking part in an all-mail election. Paxton hides behind the bogus notion of “widespread voter fraud.” The five states that conduct their elections by mail-in voting report no evidence of rampant fraudulent voting. Is there some voter fraud? Sure. There also is fraudulent voting when citizens cast their ballots on Election Day — in polling booths.

Back to my fundamental point. My argument about more voters making for a stronger democratic system than fewer of them holds up now as it has all along.

Paltry voter turnouts undeniably hand more power to fewer people. They deny consensus decisions. They result in voters ceding the power granted to them in the U.S. Constitution to someone who might feel differently about issues and candidates.

Thus, if we are facing an ongoing global pandemic, I want there to be a mail-in option to ensure greater voter turnout. I want a stronger, not a weaker, democratic system.

local news, medical news, Sports news

Hoping for a good outcome for Amarillo’s baseball future

The start of the Major League Baseball season remains a moving target.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown it all into a cocked hat. MLB hasn’t yet played a game that counts. The National Basketball Association suspended its season, along with the National Hockey League. The National Football League is supposed to start blocking and tackling, but there might not be fans in the stands.

As for baseball, there appears to be some serious tension building between the big-league clubs and their minor-league affiliates.

Pay attention, dear friends in Amarillo, Texas. I am about to talk about the beloved Sod Poodles.

There is some discussion about MLB shedding 42 minor league franchises. What in the world does that mean for the Sod Poodles, which are affiliated with the National League San Diego Padres?

Here is a small part of what Sports Illustrated is reporting:

Even as taxpayers help to keep teams afloat, several minor league affiliates reported that their MLB teams seem unconcerned about their plight during the COVID-19 crisis. Though MLB clubs are not allowed, by rule, to directly pump funds into their affiliates, several minor league executives chafed at not having received so much as a check-in phone call.

The frostiness comes amid months of tense back-and-forth between MLB and the minors over the Professional Baseball Agreement, which governs their relationship. Last extended in 2011, the deal expires this September and, as part of the negotiations, MLB is seeking to save costs by eliminating more than a quarter of affiliated teams by next season while pushing for other significant changes to its minor league partnership.

The SI article is titled “Minor League Baseball is in crisis.” So I’ll leave it to you to decide just how much of minor league ball is hurting.

As for the Sod Poodles, the franchise does not have a lengthy history. It has competed in just a single season. Granted, it was a highly successful season in 2019, with the Sod Poodles winning the Texas League championship.

Please do not accuse me of heightened negativity here. I want nothing more than for my friends and former neighbors in Amarillo to cheer the Sod Poodles on again and again.

We are faced, though, with Major League Baseball in the midst of a financial crisis created by a worldwide medical crisis. I don’t expect the baseball players union to give up the substantial sums of money that go the players. MLB, therefore, might have to face the harshest of realities if it cuts the enough affiliated franchises to save enough money to stay in business.

I am crossing my fingers. Please, let those savings not involve the Amarillo Sod Poodles.

national news

It’s because POTUS is a liar

2 Comments

I’m over here, Kaylee McEnany. Call on me! I can answer your question about why the media don’t take Donald Trump “at his word.”

The White House press secretary just can’t fathom the distrust that so many Americans have built up over her boss’s inability to tell the truth. Why, I never …

He said he is taking hydroxychloroquine, the unproven drug that many doctors and other scientists say poses risks during the coronavirus pandemic. Many of us reacted with extreme skepticism about Trump’s declaration. Why is that? It’s simple, Kaylee.

The man can’t tell the truth if his life depended on it — and I intend to use that phrase in this context because the drug he says he’s taking well might put his life in some jeopardy. As the docs have warned him.

McEnany said: “The reason is the president of the United States said it, and if it were any other president … the media would take him at his word.”

Well, duh! Again, young lady, it’s simply a matter of the trust that Trump has squandered through his torrent of lies. The dude can’t tell the truth about big things, little things, issues that matter and those that don’t matter a bit.

I am one of those Americans who doesn’t believe a single thing that he says. Nothing, kid. Zero.

So, stop making foolish assumptions about the POTUS.

The man is a liar.

national news

Decisions made in ‘living rooms’

Leave it to David Brooks, one of the smarter pundits around, to put a lot of matters into perspective as we battle the coronavirus pandemic.

Brooks, who writes a column for The New York Times and is a “conservative” half of the commentary tandem with Mark Shields on PBS’s “NewsHour,” said the decisions being made in state capitols and in Washington don’t matter all that much.

These decisions about whether to join the “reopening” of the economy nationally, he said, are being made “in living rooms” across the nation.

Boy howdy, Dave.

That’s the case in our home out there in the middle of Trump Country. My wife and I essentially are blowing off the “advice” coming from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who continues to relax the restrictions he imposed in March as the pandemic began killing people around the world.

We aren’t eating in restaurants; we aren’t yet returning to the gym; we are leery about returning to church; we’re continuing to wear masks; we continue to wash surfaces we touch when we venture beyond our home; we certainly are keeping an appropriate “social distancing” level.

Do we like living this way? Of course not! We do, though, like the good health we enjoy and we intend to keep enjoying it for as long as is humanly possible.

Yes, we made these decisions in our living room.

national news

Trump plays with fire

5 Comments

OK, I guess I can surmise that Donald John Trump is actually taking the questionable drug with the hope of preventing illness from COVID-19.

I had presumed he might be lying about it, but I guess the White House medical staff has confirmed what Trump said at that meeting Monday.

Still, I also believe strongly that Donald Trump should not be taking a drug, hydroxychloroquine, that scientists cannot confirm actually works as a preventative against killer viral infection.

Trump is 73 years of age. He packs at least 240 pounds on a body that isn’t equipped to carry that much weight. We keep hearing that his blood pressure and other vital signs are normal. However, this individual remains in an at-risk group of Americans, meaning he is older and is “morbidly obese.”

So he’s taking this drug. He tells us he gets a lot of “positive calls” from individuals who tell him hydroxychloroquine works well. Who in the name of scientific research is telling him that stuff? We out here in Flyover Country hear something different from what Trump keeps telling us he is hearing.

Scientists tell us — you and me — that hydroxychloroquine can produce heart issues that can kill someone who’s taking the drug.

Presidents assume many unwritten or unspecified duties when they take the oath to “protect and defend the Constitution.” They are consolers, comforters and role models.

Role models need to lead by example. Trump knows what the scientists are saying about hydroxychloroquine, that it poses dangers to those who consume it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing masks while we maintain a “social distance” from others.

Trump has tossed the role model part of his job into the crapper. He refuses to wear a mask in public, thinking it makes him look “ridiculous.” Now he’s consuming hydroxychloroquine, a drug that could produce extremely dire side effects … even for the president of the United States.

Once again, as if we need reminding, Donald Trump is failing yet another fundamental test of leadership.

national news

Trump anti-Obama pettiness continues to grow

This story doesn’t surprise me one little bit.

Donald Trump reportedly is refusing to unveil a portrait of Barack H. Obama in a White House ceremony, breaking a 42-year tradition dating back to the days of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

The ceremony has become part of the White House tradition of one president honoring the service of his immediate predecessor. Not this time.

President Carter started this tradition in 1978 when he invited former President Ford to the White House to unveil the portrait of the 38th president. Presidents Carter and Ford, even after their brutal and bruising campaign in 1976, became fast friends.

President Obama and his successor likely never will achieve anything even approaching civility.

Trump has accused Obama of illegal activities; he recently called him a “grossly incompetent” president; he has sought openly to dismantle any vestige of the Obama administration.

For his part, Obama has been largely quiet … until recently.

Now it’s Trump who will decline to unveil the portrait of his immediate predecessor in what looks like yet another disgraceful, disgusting and dispiriting example of petty petulance.

President Obama in 2012 welcomed his immediate predecessor, President Bush, to the White House for a portrait unveiling. These men are not political allies. However, they exhibit great respect for their service to the country.

If you watch this video, you’ll understand what I mean by referring to Donald Trump’s pettiness.