Monthly Archives: June 2020

State news

Is there a landslide in the making?

I am not predicting anything, but I do want to share an idle thought that crossed my mind on this sweltering North Texas day.

I have seen a number of reputable public opinion polls that say the same thing: Joe Biden is well within striking distance of Donald Trump among Texans in the 2020 presidential election. A couple of these surveys have the former VP at a percentage point or perhaps two behind Trump. That is a statistical dead heat, a tie, it’s anyone’s race to win.

So … here’s the deal. If Joe Biden picks off Texas, which hasn’t voted for a Democrat since 1976 when Jimmy Carter defeated President  Gerald Ford, then we’re looking at a serious landslide victory for Joseph Biden Jr.

Biden’s strategy? Campaign hard in Texas and he must remind Texans that Donald Trump is a pathological liar who doesn’t give a rat’s a** about them.

Just thinking — and hoping — out loud. Be cool, man.

military news

Glad to re-engage this Confederate debate

I am so very happy that Americans are re-engaging each other in this debate over the Confederacy, the Confederate States of America and whether we should be naming public institutions — namely military establishments — in honor of enemies of the state.

The debate has been joined yet again because many Americans are awakening to the realization that the CSA was formed in 1861 for one purpose: to destroy the United States of America. Why? To enable states to continue to enslave human beings, to allow them to be kept as property of other human beings.

So the Confederacy fired on a Union garrison in Charleston Harbor, S.C., and ignited the Civil War.

The men who fought for the CSA were traitors to the nation. There is no other way to consider them. So now we have resumed the debate over whether their names belong on places such as Army posts, which trains, houses and equips men and women to defend this country against its enemies. The irony is astounding.

You may spare me the tired notion that the Confederate statues and the names of these individuals on buildings and other public establishments is a recognition of the nation’s “heritage.” The heritage that some of us want to protect does not deserve the honor it has been given. That it took so long to understand that perhaps is the most astonishing aspect of this debate.

The argument that the CSA was steeped in protecting “states’ rights” also has been revealed as a tired euphemism for what it really intended to protect. Slavery is this nation’s original sin and we must deal with it forthrightly.

Now is as good a time as any, given that so much time has passed since those Americans were set free and granted the rights of citizenship they deserved to possess all along.

This debate, of course, is lacking one key voice … that of the commander in chief, who says he won’t accept the idea of changing the names of military posts. Donald Trump cannot offer a single reason to keeping these names, other than to placate those among his political base who demand that they remain.

Someone said today that the names of these enemies of the Union — and the flag under which they fought — deserve to be displayed in museums … alongside other enemies of the United States: the Nazis, fascists, ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Soviet Union, the North Vietnamese communists, the People’s Republic of China.

Should they remain attached to places of high honor and respect? Absolutely not!

national news

Protester suffers brain injury

You no doubt have seen the video.

Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old protester, approached a phalanx of Buffalo, N.Y., police officers armed with shields and assorted riot gear. The cops pushed him to the ground. Gugino hit his head hard on the pavement and blood began pouring out of his ear.

The police walked on by. Someone finally summoned medical help. Gugino was taken to the hospital, where he was listed in serious but stable condition.

It turns out Gugino suffered a brain injury. He needs physical therapy.

What, though, did the president say about this fellow? The Conspiracy Theorist in Chief suggested that Gugino faked his fall, that his tumble onto the pavement was exaggerated. Donald Trump called him an Antifa “provocateur.”

Let’s just say that the only provocateur in this instance is Donald Trump, who is provoking more anger, more distrust of those who are protesting police brutality … which was the cause of the Buffalo march in the first place.

Get well, Mr. Gugino. As for Donald John Trump, well … I am just hoping he is in the final throes of his disgraceful tenure in the nation’s highest office.

medical news, national news

Texas ought to follow Oregon’s lead

1 Comment

I have intimate knowledge and familiarity with two of our nation’s 50 states. I was born, came of age and grew up in Oregon; I have lived in Texas for most of my life, 36 out of 70 years on Earth.

Oregon is experiencing a spike in COVID-19 infections and is slamming a halt to its plan to reopen the state’s business community. Texas also is experiencing a spike, setting infection and death records daily, but it is moving ahead with its phased reopening.

Hmm. I believe Oregon has it correct and that Texas is reacting badly. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he sees no real need to scale back, let alone shut down, the state’s reopening. Why? Because the state has no shortage of intensive care unit beds in hospitals, according to Abbott.

Oregon has adopted a go-slow approach to this pandemic. Accordingly, Oregon has experienced a much lower per capita infection and death rate than many states. Texas cannot make that claim.

According to the Texas Tribune: The number of available beds is seen as a key gauge for the state’s ability to handle a potential surge in coronavirus cases, and Abbott has said the hospitalization rate — the proportion of infected Texans who are requiring hospitalization — is a benchmark he’s closely monitoring. That number has trended slowly downward since April and was just over 8% on Friday.

I continue to believe the state is moving too quickly to return to what some Texans hope is “normal” business and recreational activity.

Hey, I want this to end as much as the next guy. I want to return to regular activity. I am tired of wearing a mask when I mingle with others at the grocery store. I am sick of slathering sanitizer on my hands whenever I touch door handles, fuel pumps and shopping carts.

I also do not want my family members exposed to a virus that could do them serious harm. I want the state to take greater care than it is already doing to help ensure that they remain safe.

national news

Are we really ready to repeat this fluke?

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I have written of Donald Trump’s election as president as being the greatest political fluke in U.S. history.

Hardly no one saw it coming in 2016. The pundit class, all the political “experts” believed to their core that Hillary Clinton would be elected. She wasn’t. Instead we got a guy who had never sought public office, let alone ever held one. Many of us predicted he would be a disaster as president of the United States.

I hate saying this — yes, I really do hate it — but he’s proven to be far worse than we thought. The Nitwit in Chief has shredded the presidency. He has destroyed relations between the legislative and executive branches of government. Trump has decimated our international alliances. POTUS has turned us into a worldwide laughingstock.

We have a chance in November to rescue what Trump has damaged. The destruction he has brought to intergovernmental relations can be restored by electing someone who understands how the executive and legislative branches can cooperate and seek common ground. Yes, that would be Joe Biden, the former longtime senator and two-term vice president.

However, the wreckage that Trump has brought will be difficult to clear from the landscape.

Time and time and time again, this president refuses to speak to issues that compel his attention. The issue of race relations has returned to the top of our minds. The death of a black man by a white police officer who choked the life out of him for nearly nine minutes has galvanized a movement. Trump doesn’t speak to that tragedy specifically. Instead he quotes racist cops from more than 50 years ago and drives wedges between Americans, relishing the division he is creating and widening.

Yes, we also have the pandemic. Trump’s initial response was pathetic and rotten to the core. Tens of thousands of Americans have died from COVID-19; there will be tens of thousands more who will die. Trump claims success. For what?

Are we really ready to commit the Greatest Political Fluke 2.0 come November? The polling tells us “no!” Then again, it said the same thing four years ago … and look at what we got.

national news

Trump to accept nomination … in Jacksonville

I guess the Republican National Committee is going to stage its convention in Charlotte, N.C. after all. Donald Trump couldn’t find a suitable venue to switch at the last minute.

You know the story. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, was too concerned about the health of convention attendees to allow them to pack themselves into an arena and be exposed to a killer virus.

But wait! Trump is going to make his nominating acceptance speech in Jacksonville, Fla., more than 300 miles south. I understand he’ll get to speak to a packed arena full of Trumpsters — who will have to sign a waiver absolving the Trump campaign of liability in case they get sick from COVID-19.

Good gracious. Trump is hellbent on staging an event with lots of folks hollering, whoopin’ and cheering his every incoherent rant. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who rushed to get his state reopened after the pandemic shut everything down, is all in on that one.

Even though the Trump team is requiring arena attendees to sign the waiver that says they can’t sue the campaign if they get sick, they’ll still have to live with their conscience if anyone falls ill from the killer viral infection.

That’s presuming, of course, that they have a conscience to bother them about such matters. I have my serious doubts.

national news

What will happen post-Trump?

A critic of High Plains Blogger posed a question to me that I feel compelled to answer with this post.

This critic, a dedicated Donald Trump devotee, wanted to know what I would write about were it not for The Donald’s presence on the national scene. I reminded him that I have written on plenty of non-Trump topics during the past four years. I presume he’s like a lot of us who focus on the things with which we disagree most fervently, causing us to narrow our vision dramatically.

Here is the truth, though, about the future of this blog post-Donald Trump. I am looking forward to weaning myself of Trump-related matters. Whether it’s after this upcoming election (please, please … I hope that’s the case) or after the next one in 2024, I am excited at the prospect of looking beyond the wreckage that this individual has brought to the political stage.

That’s my hope. However, I do have this fear. It is that Donald Trump, as a former president of the United States, is still going to command a lot of attention. He will continue to have his social media access, namely Twitter. I fear, therefore, that Donald Trump is not going to fade away quietly into some sort of post-presidential hibernation the way every one of his predecessors has done.

Surely, some have done so more notably than others. Perhaps the biggest post-presidential tragedy occurred after Ronald Reagan left office in 1989. He retired to California, would emerge on occasion to make a speech, such as when he famously spoke to the 1992 Republican convention in Houston. Then in November 1994, not even six years after leaving the White House, he told the world of his affliction from Alzheimer’s disease. President Reagan bid us farewell … and we never heard from him again.

Donald Trump’s penchant for hogging the limelight won’t allow him to go away quietly. The good news for yours truly, though, is that as a former president he will become decidedly less relevant on matters that count. He will be unable to set policy or issue executive orders. He’ll just be one of the rest of us, using social media to blather on this and/or that subject.

I intend to focus this blog — as I declare in my profile — on issues relating to “politics, public policy and life experience.” Where any of this concerns Donald Trump likely will entail what his successor does to repair the damage Trump inflicted on the presidency.

national news

Trump is ‘fine’ with Gen. Milley’s regret? Sure … I believe that

Photographer: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Donald Trump says he is “fine” with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley’s expression of regret for taking part in that hideous photo op at the Episcopal church not far from the White House.

Milley, a four-star Army general, said his presence in the walk from the White House to the church where Donald Trump held up a Bible for a goofy photograph to show how much he cares about religion sent the wrong message about the military’s mission. It thrust the military into a partisan political dispute, which Gen. Milley is not in keeping with why he wears the uniform. The entire event was meant to show Trump’s disgust with protesters who have damaged property in response to the George Floyd killing by the police in Minneapolis.

Hey, Trump told Fox News he has no problem with Milley’s push back.

Do you think Trump is telling the truth? Bwahahahaha!

The Liar in Chief’s veracity on anything that flies out of his mouth is open to serious questioning. Were I a betting man I’d say Trump has a serious problem with Gen. MIlley’s remarkable admission that he messed up … except that someone advised Trump to keep his thoughts private.

Unbelievable.

crime news

Trump fumbles chance to deal forthrightly with racial unrest

Donald J. Trump came to North Texas today ostensibly to talk about race relations, about police reform and about how to quell the suspicions of the African-American community about police protection in its neighborhoods.

Well, he didn’t come close to sealing the deal.

Trump spoke to mostly white folks. He snubbed three of Dallas County’s top law enforcement officials — all of whom are black — and talked mostly aloud about the demonstrations that turned riotous in response to George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in late May.

Trump never mentioned George Floyd’s name in public. He talked about the beauty of seeing Minneapolis police use tear gas to disperse demonstrators.

Where was the public acknowledgement that there might, indeed, be a serious problem with police protection in African-American communities? I didn’t hear anything.

I continue to support police efforts to protect and serve the communities they patrol. I am not going to endorse the notion of “systemic racism” within all police departments. I do, though, acknowledge there needs to be serious examination of police practices and there should be a careful and thorough discussion of ways that police departments can ensure that they treat all citizens equally.

I wish Donald Trump would have spoken to all of that while he visited North Texas. He didn’t say a word publicly about police practices. He didn’t say a word about the man whose recent death has galvanized a movement.

Donald Trump failed once again.

national news

Divider in Chief shows his stuff … again!

Donald J. “Divider in Chief” Trump is going to make a splash — bigly! — when he resumes active campaigning for re-election.

He’s going to show up in Tulsa, Okla., on Juneteenth of all days. That’s June 19, the day African-Americans received word in 1865 that they had been freed from enslavement.

But … here’s the kick in the gut. Tulsa is the place where in May 1921 white supremacists massacred African-Americans in what became known as the nation’s most hideous racial confrontation.

It was far more than a riot. It was a full-scale assault on the black community in that city. It killed 36 people, 26 of whom were black.

And this is the place where Donald Trump wants to re-start his re-election campaign, which has been all but suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic. Astonishing, man! And reprehensible. Also despicable. I’ll throw in repulsive to boot!

I don’t buy the notion that Trump is totally ignorant of U.S. history or what Juneteenth means to African-Americans or what Tulsa means to those who abhor racial violence. Instead, I am going to endorse the notion put forth by former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who said recently that Trump is the first president in Mattis’s memory who doesn’t seek to unify the nation, that he works deliberately to divide it.

As I watch Trump re-start his campaign, I will do so with utter disgust that he would deliberately inflame tensions that already are smoldering from the anger created by the death of George Floyd, who was suffocated while in police custody in Minneapolis.

Gen. Mattis appears to be so correct, that this president has no interest in unifying the country.

Sickening.