Monthly Archives: May 2020

medical news, science news

‘I don’t know who he is; I’ve never met him’

Donald J. Trump’s response to the scathing testimony from a fellow he demoted in the midst of an infectious disease pandemic speaks volumes to me.

Dr. Richard Bright is now a whistleblower who is reporting to Congress about what he believes are serious shortcomings in Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Bright once led the administration’s effort to search for a vaccine to fight the virus, but then questioned whether Trump was correct to push a drug with little known affect on the COVID-19 virus.

Trump got angry and pushed Bright aside, sent him to a midlevel post in the National Institutes of Health.

OK, so Trump responded Thursday to a question about Bright’s testimony. He said he doesn’t “know him; I’ve never met him.” He said he doesn’t “want to meet him” and that Bright sounds like a “disgruntled employee.”

Let’s ponder that response for just a moment.

If Donald Trump is telling the truth — and that is a highly dubious presumption — then he has just revealed to the world precisely why his pandemic response has been such a hideous failure to date. The man chosen to lead the vaccine research effort is unknown to the commander in chief who wants to be known as a “wartime president”?

Suppose, too, that Trump is lying, that he really has met Dr. Bright; that tells me plenty as well about Trump’s reliability, his leadership and his command of the situation.

Bright said the fight against the pandemic lacks a coordinated national effort. Gosh, who do you suppose should be providing that national coordination? Hey, I’ll take a stab at it: The responsibility belongs to the president of the United States.

He has failed!

As Bright told the congressional committee: “We’re in deep s**t.”

national news

Trump Derangement Syndrome? Hah!

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ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Critics of this blog have accused me over the past three or four years of suffering from what they call Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Why, they just cannot grasp why I am so dedicated to the removal from office of Donald J. Trump, the winner of the biggest electoral fluke in U.S. political history.

Well, I now will throw that TDS accusation back at them.

Whatever affliction from which I suffer pales in comparison to the Obama Derangement Syndrome that has befallen Donald J. Trump.

Allow me this blinding example …

Donald Trump is caught in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that is killing thousands of Americans every single day; more than 85,000 of us have died at last count. That casualty count is mounting at a frightening pace.

Trump’s early response was despicable in the extreme. He has failed at every level imaginable to show leadership.

So, what does he do while he should be formulating a national strategy to fight this killer viral infection? He accuses former President Obama of committing a crime. He says the Senate needs to summon Obama to testify before the Justice Committee to answer questions about why he “unmasked” former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was talking to Russian officials while the Russians were attacking our electoral system.

Donald Trump is seeking to deflect attention from his miserable failure to lead the country in the midst of a medical and economic crisis.

This president is doing something that not even Richard Nixon — the only president to resign from office — thought of doing. To be sure, President Nixon compiled his enemies list and abused the power of his office. Donald Trump has accused Barack Obama has committed an illegal act and has in effect called for him to be jailed.

That is what I call Obama Derangement Syndrome. It’s serious and dangerous. If what I suffer from is Trump Derangement Syndrome — and it compels me to keep speaking out against this demented, deranged president — then I am all in!

medical news

Listen up, Dr. Fauci: Trump is fighting you

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Dr. Anthony Fauci testified this week before a Senate committee on the fight to quell the coronavirus pandemic that has killed 85,000 Americans.

Then came a series of questions from one of Donald Trump’s toadies on the panel, rookie Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler from Georgia, who wanted to know if Fauci felt tension between himself and the president. Fauci said “no,” that he doesn’t believe he and Trump are at odds.

Then something else happened later in the day. Donald Trump contradicted something Fauci had said about the wisdom of letting children back into school classrooms this fall.

So … yes, Trump and Fauci are at odds. Got that? I want to stand with the nation’s premier infectious disease expert over the bloviations of a cheap huckster who masquerades as president of the United States.

Senators asked Fauci whether children should be allowed back into classrooms this fall. He balked at the suggestion, saying it would be premature to open classrooms to students if the virus isn’t contained.

What did the Carnival Barker in Chief say about Fauci’s response? He was “surprised.” He said Fauci seeks to play to all audiences. He said Fauci’s answer to the Senate panel was “not acceptable.”

Where I come from, that looks and sounds like a dispute between two principals involved ostensibly in a fight against a common enemy.

Where does Fauci go from here? Does he quit? Does he walk away from the president’s pandemic response task force? No. He shouldn’t.

Fauci is nearly 80 years of age. He has worked for every president of both political parties dating back to 1984, when he was hired by President Reagan to take the lead on HIV/AIDS research. His credentials are beyond reproach. Fauci is an expert on infectious disease and the pandemic response team needs his reasoned, rational, scientific approach.

Indeed, this man’s wisdom stands in the starkest contrast possible to the bloviating bullsh** that flies incessantly out of Donald Trump’s pie hole.

I am one American who wants Fauci to remain on the job looking out for us. What’s more, I am as certain as I am sitting here that he knows beyond a doubt that he is working for a moron.

It’s just too damn bad he cannot say it out loud.

Sports news

Will there be a fan-less baseball season? Well … probably

At the risk of being called a Dickey Downer, or a Negative Ned, I need to suggest what is looking patently obvious to this baseball fan.

If the Major Leagues suit up for the 2020 season while we are fighting a deadly worldwide viral pandemic, the athletes will play in front of themselves and each other. No fans in the stands. No cheering from behind the dugout. No curtain calls after dramatic home runs.

MLB is considering an 82-game schedule to begin around the Fourth of July. I understand that the team owners have signed off on it, but need approval by the players union to close the deal.

Yes, we have all these beautiful baseball venues around the country that will be devoid of fans. Why? The answer is obvious: Social distancing requirements — which are essential to stemming the infection rate — will not allow fans to be crammed into the stadiums next to each other.

Am I OK with that, with playing these games before tens of thousands of empty seats? Absolutely. I want to see baseball return.

Now … I want to speak briefly to my friends in Amarillo, who have been awaiting the start of the Texas League AA season featuring their beloved Amarillo Sod Poodles. The last time I commented on the team’s immediate future, a sorehead among the Sod Poodles fan club accused me of being Mr. Negativity.

I hate to say this, but Hodgetown — the shiny new ballpark built along Buchanan Street in downtown Amarillo — should remain empty, too, even if the Sod Poodles take the field for some hardball.

Yes, this pains me terribly. The ballpark came into being with considerable fanfare and much-deserved hype. It’s a first-class venue. The Sod Poodles’ fans packed the place for virtually every home game in 2019.

For the sake of community health — which at this moment appears to be teetering with a rash of outbreaks — the Sod Poodles should play their games before no one.

Baseball fans all across this great country are going to suffer the same withdrawal. If that’s what must happen, well, there’s always next season … or we can hope.

national news

Trump launches scorched-Earth retreat

I never thought Donald Trump could out-do himself while he was being impeached by the House of Representatives.

He made big news daily with his idiotic pronouncements and allegations against House Democrats, special counsel Robert Mueller and the media.

However, by golly, the Dipsh** in Chief has done it. He has buried us under an avalanche of even weirder statements.

He has accused President Barack Obama of committing an illegal act. He wants the former president to testify before Congress about allegations that Trump hasn’t specified.

The president’s former pandemic guru has testified that Trump sought to promote an unproven drug as a “miracle” cure. Trump said he has never met Dr. Richard Bright and doesn’t “want to meet him.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, told Congress that it would be unwise to rush to reopen schools; Trump said Fauci gave an “unacceptable answer” to that matter.

Trump continues to slander his opponents daily. For example, he has accused MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough — a former Republican congressman who’s turned into a Trump critic — of committing murder.

I cannot keep up with this madness. Donald Trump continues to dig himself more deeply into a hole he began digging the moment he announced his presidential campaign in the summer of 2015.

Sigh …

My pandemic fatigue is reaching, dare I say it, epidemic proportion

medical news

Are we moving too quickly to reopen?

Social distancing is the weapon of necessity in this fight we are waging against the coronavirus pandemic.

Get a load of this bit of news out of Amarillo: Hundreds of meatpacking plant employees aren’t showing any symptoms of the COVID-19 virus — but are testing positive anyway for the viral infection.

Which makes social distancing and the wearing of masks so very imperative, according to Amarillo Mayor Ginger Nelson.

“We are encountering people who are asymptomatic,” said Mayor Nelson in remarks to KAMR/KCIT-TV in Amarillo. “They don’t know they’re sick, but they have the virus and they’re at the grocery store, you’re encountering them, and that’s why it’s so important to wear a mask. You could be that person.”

And yet we keep hearing from fools such as, oh, the president of the United States who tell us how vital it is to reopen the country, to get the economy jump started. Donald Trump cares less about the health of Americans than he does about the state of the economy and whether its current crisis bodes ill for his re-election chances.

Moreover, he is enlisting many of his gubernatorial allies — such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — in pushing forward possibly too quickly.

The Tyson Foods plant in Amarillo is a huge employer. More than 3,500 employees got tested for the virus, many of whom tested positive. I am forced to ask: Is it worth exposing those employees to serious illness or even death? I would say with emphasis: Hell no!

media news

Journalism takes another step toward irrelevance

It pains me to acknowledge this, but based on what I have just learned, daily print journalism — I am talking about newspapers — has taken another big step toward a dark hole of irrelevance.

The Providence Journal, Rhode Island’s largest newspaper, has announced it no longer will publish editorials. You know, those are the opinion pieces that represent the newspaper’s view on issues of the day.

Here is part of a letter that Journal executive editor Alan Rosenberg wrote to readers:

It’s a decision that we don’t make lightly. But it’s been coming for a long time…

[After the partisan newspapers of the 19th century,] most newspapers abandoned partisanship in their news pages, but kept the idea that they should speak out, in their editorials, on what they perceived as the best interests of their community and country.

But in doing so, they inadvertently undermined readers’ perception of a newspaper’s core mission: to report the news fairly. Our goal in news stories is always to learn, and reflect, the facts of a situation, then report them without bias. Reporters’ opinions, if they have them, have no place in our stories.

But when the newspaper itself expresses opinions on those same subjects, it causes understandable confusion. Readers wonder: Can reporters really do their work without trying to reflect the views expressed in their employers’ name? Can they cast a skeptical eye on a politician their paper has endorsed, or a generous eye on one it has opposed?

The answer is a definite “yes” — but my email since I became executive editor shows that many just don’t buy it.

The Providence Journal is owned by Gannett Corp. What we have here is a display in gutlessness. It is a shameful capitulation to the forces that are slowly but inexorably making daily newspapers irrelevant in the lives of thinking Americans.

I spent the vast bulk of my 36 years in journalism writing editorials and editing opinion pages. We once were committed to providing leadership to communities that used to look for some semblance of guidance from their newspapers. Sure, we had that argument with readers that Rosenberg mentioned about whether news coverage was influenced by newspapers’ editorial policy.

This news out of Providence, R.I., saddens me terribly. It well might get even worse for readers of the last newspaper where I worked on my professional journey, the Amarillo Globe-News. Gannett owns the Globe-News and Gannett has become a cost-cutting master in this era of declining subscribership and advertising.

I hate saying it … but I fear the end of daily journalism in Amarillo, Texas, might be at hand.

national news

Get the kid off the stage

Jared Kushner clearly married “up,” if you presume becoming a member of the Donald John Trump family constitutes a sort of promotion.

The young man’s father-in-law is now the president of the United States. Trump had the bad taste to place Kushner in the role of “senior adviser,” even though the kid has no experience advising anyone of anything, especially when it concerns high-level federal policy.

Kushner needs to fade away, far from the klieg lights. Off the stage. Gone, man!

He isn’t qualified to do anything of importance. For example …

He hinted just this week that there might be a reason — if the coronavirus pandemic isn’t arrested — to delay the date of the presidential election. To be fair, he backed away from what he implied. Still, Kushner seemed to suggest in the first instance that he was offering a belief on something about which he has zero authority, let alone any knowledge.

This boy wonder has been put in charge of cobbling together a comprehensive Middle East peace deal. He hasn’t made the grade. He also has been tasked with reforming government operations. No good there, either. Then he declared the other day that Daddy-in-Law Trump’s pandemic response has been a “great success story.” Seriously, Jared? Sheesh!

The Constitution declares that the presidential election must occur on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This year it’s Nov. 3. The question will be the manner in which we cast our ballots. Moving the date is a non-starter.

Someone should inform Jared Kushner of that fact, which has been as lost on him as it has on his know-nothing father-in-law.

national news

Just resign, Mr. POTUS … and go far away!

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(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Donald J. Trump is incorrigible. He is a political reprobate.

If the hideous event occurs in November and he is somehow re-elected president of the United States, I want him to do the only thing he should do. I want Trump to resign from office. I want him to vanish from the public stage. I want him out of my sight. I no longer want to hear his voice.

This isn’t an original thought. I merely have reached my limit with this individual.

It wouldn’t hurt my feelings one tiny bit were he to quit prior to the election, even though handing the presidency to Mike Pence well might ensure Pence’s election were he to seek a full term.

Donald Trump cannot lead the nation. He doesn’t know how to govern. Trump cannot work with the entire Congress. He has alienated the legislative branch from the executive branch. Trump already has been impeached by the House of Representatives; he survived conviction in the Senate by coercing his GOP allies to hang with him, depriving the nation the opportunity to restore its faith in government.

The coronavirus response has been the deal breaker. Donald Trump’s early refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the pandemic has brought us to the brink of collapse. When given the opportunity to lead the nation, to pull us together, to speak from the heart even to those of us who voted against him in 2016, Trump has failed miserably.

He has squandered the last bit of faith any of us might have held that he could pull it together, that he could find a way to exhibit the kind of leadership he bragged had been the hallmark of his building a business empire.

My ever-lovin’ God in heaven! He has continued to fail every single step along the way. His presence in office puts more Americans in jeopardy.

Were he win re-election against Joe Biden — and the thought sends chills up my back — he would become unleashed, unhinged, unencumbered. He doesn’t know a single thing about the limits of his office. He will seek to extend his political reach far beyond his grasp.

I know that Trump won’t quit. He will defame Biden all the way to the end of the campaign … and likely beyond. Trump won’t seek to unify the nation as he seeks to win re-election. He will drive wedge after wedge between voters of disparate ideologies.

Donald Trump had no business being elected in 2016. His response to the deadly worldwide pandemic ratifies what I have thought all along … that this individual is unfit for public office.

He needs to quit.

local news

This congressional candidate has rocks in his noggin

Ronny Jackson wants to be elected to a West Texas congressional seat, representing a district where he’s never lived.

However, he is now trying to appeal to the right-wing nut base of the Republican Party by suggesting that President Obama has “weaponized” the federal government in an effort to bring down Donald J. Trump.

Jackson, a retired Navy admiral, put this out via Twitter. “President Obama weaponized the highest levels of our government to spy on President Trump … Every Deep State traitor deserves to be brought to justice for their heinous actions.”

There you go. Did you get that? The punishment for “traitorous” acts is death. If you read that the way I read it, Admiral Jackson is calling for the execution of the former president of the United States.

What a crock!

Jackson is running for the GOP nomination in a runoff election in the 13th Congressional District, which covers the Texas Panhandle. Mac Thornberry, who has represented the 13th since 1995, is not seeking re-election this year.

Now we have this carpetbagger Jackson seeking to succeed Thornberry. Jackson was born in Levelland, which is outside the district. He has never lived within the 13th District. But he purports to know the district and its residents’ needs and desires.

I will say this, though: Jackson’s accusation that President Obama has weaponized the government plays nicely into the vacuous numbskulls who believe as he does about the former president. Take my word for it, the district has a number of them out there.

Jackson, who served as personal physician to both Obama and Trump, has decided to weigh in on the Michael Flynn matter. Obama fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and counseled the Trump team about hiring him, fearing Flynn would be a threat to national security. Well, it turned out that Flynn lied to the FBI about the Russian attack on the 2016 election, then pleaded guilty to the lie. The Justice Department now wants to clear Michael Flynn’s name and Trump is backing the DOJ recommendation to do just that.

Now we get this hack doctor/politician tossing out an accusation that President Obama is a member of the “Deep State”?

Ridiculous!