Monthly Archives: June 2020

crime news

Don’t do this, Minneapolis City Council

Talk about the Mother of Overreactions.

The Minneapolis City Council, which governs a city reeling from the death of George Floyd, the black man killed by an white police officer in an incident that has spawned an international protest movement, is considering disbanding the city police department.

Yep. Nine of 12 council members have signed on to a plan that would eliminate the police department and apparently start over. They want to build a new department from scratch, from the ground up.

Hold on here! I believe that would a monumental mistake.

Yes, George Floyd died because he was brutalized by four officers of the Minneapolis Police Department. One of them is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter; three others face charges of complicity in the actions of the one rogue cop. I hope they are convicted and are sent to prison.

I also believe the Minneapolis Police Department needs a top-to-bottom review of its policing strategies and tactics. But … disband the department? Remove it? Wipe it out? Is this what’s on the horizon?

PDs across the nation are undergoing intense public scrutiny. There is this “defund the police” movement developing in some communities, again as an extreme overreaction to what is without a doubt a hideous example of police brutality against an African-American citizen.

I want there to be reviews done within police departments. We need to end this terrible trend of cops treating racial and ethnic minority suspects differently — and more harshly — than they treat white folks. That has to stop! Now!

Disband departments while potentially leaving communities without police protection? This crisis can be resolved without such drastic overreaction.

national news

RNC looks for a new cheering station

Donald John Trump is looking across the nation for a place to stage a political convention that will nominate him for a second term as president of the United States.

He faces a monumental task.

Trump has all but pulled the Republican National Convention out of Charlotte, N.C., because North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper cannot guarantee that the RNC can conduct a convention packed with screaming Trumpsters. Why? Too much danger from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump isn’t having it. He wants to take it to a more politically friendly place, given that Gov. Cooper is a Democrat.

I chuckled out loud this morning when I read the Dallas Morning News story that said Dallas County won’t be available to the RNC, even if the GOP wanted to move its convention to Texas. It ain’t likely to make the move here, either. Dallas County is undergoing a surge in infection from the viral plague; so is Texas. We’re out of the game.

These events take many months to plan. For the RNC to seek to change its convention venue at virtually the last minute provides the party with a task that even Donald Trump — the self-proclaimed master of everything and everyone on Earth — cannot complete.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee, which is scheduled to convene its convention in Milwaukee, might turn instead to a “virtual” event that nominates Joe Biden as its nominee. He won’t get the cheering crowd, but merely might rely on telecommunications technology to get the word out to millions of voters as to why he is better suited to lead the nation.

I suspect the bungling, bumbling and blathering from Donald Trump over relocating the RNC might provide Biden with plenty of grist.

national news

Should he speak to us from the Oval Office?

There is word out of the West Wing that Donald John Trump might speak soon to the nation about race relations, police conduct and unity among Americans.

He’ll go on national TV, or so the reports suggest, to quell the unrest that has roiled in cities from coast to coast to coast since Minneapolis cops killed George Floyd while arresting him for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

The question one must ask is this: What good would a Donald Trump speech do?

Many of us out here do not believe Trump is sincerely concerned about the incidents of police conduct that have brought people into the street in protest. He seems much more concerned about the damage done by the rioters who have erupted. I understand that concern; that conduct troubles me, too … so on that score, POTUS and I are on the same page.

However, the issue goes way beyond that aspect and Trump hasn’t talked openly and sincerely about the concerns that have prompted the protests.

If we hear from Teleprompter Trump during an Oval Office speech, I doubt seriously whether he would move anyone to believe he finally gets it. That version of Donald Trump simply is not believable. He reads prepared text as if he’s being held hostage.

The other Trump, the one in which he is merely himself, well … that version of this con man is incapable of speaking to us about matters of the heart.

I have next to zero hope that Donald Trump is wired in a way that can deliver a heartfelt speech about race relations in this country. I mean, this clown is the Godfather of the Birther Movement, who sought to disparage the candidacy of the man who became the first African-American ever elected president of the United States.

national news

Kneeling is a legitimate form of peaceful, civil protest

OK, here it comes again: the discussion over whether “taking a knee” while they play the National Anthem dishonors Old Glory.

I didn’t want to re-enter this discussion, but I am going to do so anyway. I’ll just need to prepare for some blowback.

Americans are protesting today against the treatment of African-Americans by some police departments and officers. It’s been a longstanding problem that the nation has so far failed to face on a national level. The George Floyd tragedy brought it to our attention in graphic, tragic and reprehensible fashion.

You saw the former cop kneeling on Floyd’s neck, snuffing the life out of him. Now we have re-ignited the discussion of whether professional athletes have dishonored Old Glory when they take a bended knee while they play the National Anthem.

No. The flag is not dishonored.

What does the kneeling represent? It represents a form of civil protest against certain practices and policies enacted by law enforcement agencies. The demonstration against those policies is, at its very essence, the basis for the founding of this great nation and the flag that flies over government buildings.

The nation was built by men who protested religious oppression. They created a governing document that laid out certain civil liberties in the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The first of those amendments addresses several key provisions: Congress shall make no law that establishes a state religion or interferes with a free press or prohibits the right of citizens to speak freely and to seek “redress” of grievances against the government.

Is that clear enough? It is to me.

Kneeling during the playing of the Anthem speaks against policies that many of us find objectionable. It is in no way a statement of disrespect to the flag, to the nation, to the men and women who fight to preserve our freedoms, or to those who serve the public.

Yet this form of civil protest has been perverted into something unrecognizable to the men who sought to make a hallmark of the government they created.

It all started when a pro football player took a knee to protest. Donald Trump called him and other pro athletes “sons of bitches.” He said they should be tossed aside, ignored, punished for their alleged disrespect of the flag. That is as shallow and idiotic a response as I can imagine.

Here’s my request: If we disagree with the method some folks use to protest a public policy, then focus the disagreement on the act itself … and stay far away from suggesting it disrespects or dishonors the principles on which the founders created this country.

Good heavens! Taking a knee in peaceful protest is the embodiment of what the founders intended!

military news, national news, political news

Powell joins growing GOP parade lining up behind Biden

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“I’m very close to Joe Biden in a social matter and on a political matter. I have worked with him for 35, 40 years … And he is now the candidate, and I will be voting for him.”

There you go. Another longtime Republican — a man of considerable standing in military and diplomatic circles — has declared that Donald John Trump will not get his vote for re-election this year.

Retired Army Gen. Colin Powell is going to back the Democratic nominee for president, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

I need to stipulate that Powell — who served as national security adviser, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and secretary of state for two Republican presidents — is not a Republican In Name Only, a RINO. He’s the real deal.

Gen. Powell also is a man of high principle and honor who says that Trump is unfit to serve as commander in chief of the U.S. military. Trump has veered too far from constitutional principles, according to Powell.

I am not going to venture too far afield with this blog post and suggest that the GOP dam is breaking, that the Republican wall that has surrounded Donald Trump is caving under the stress brought by Trump’s flouting of every possible presidential or constitutional norm.

However, Gen. Colin Powell’s declaration that he’s voting once again for a Democratic opponent of Donald Trump is a big deal.

national news, religious news

Good Book becomes part of POTUS’s political playbook

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Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

I will remain offended likely for a long time at the sight of Donald Trump prancing in front of the church near the White House, holding up a Holy Bible as if it was a political prop.

I’ve heard some chatter out there about how Trump was holding the Bible backward and upside-down.

What is perhaps most profoundly upsetting was the tactic he used to clear the path from the White House to St. John Episcopal Church. He used tear gas and dispatched heavily armed police tactical units to beat back peaceful protesters. You’ve seen the video, yes? It shows cops walloping protesters with their “defensive” shields while tear gas is billowing up around everyone.

This came after Donald Trump proclaimed his honoring of “peaceful protesters.” That ain’t how you “honor” them, Mr. President. They were out there to protest police brutality and to call for reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of rogue cops in Minneapolis, Minn.

Then he stands before the boarded-up church. He holds up the Bible. A reporter asked him if it was his Bible. He responded, “It’s a Bible.”

He doesn’t have a clue as to what it contains, which of course is the holy word by which faithful Christians seek to live. Donald Trump isn’t one of them.

No. He’s carnival barker and a con man. For him to use the Good Book in that fashion is anathema to the message delivered by Jesus Christ himself.

Donald Trump, as has been chronicled widely, doesn’t read anything. He reportedly has no need, being the self-proclaimed smartest human being in all of recorded history.

Instead, he uses Christendom’s holiest text as a political prop.

Disgusting.

national news

Nation needs this kind of wisdom

The United States of America is in crisis. We have been through this before, in other contexts. However, we are lacking the kind of wisdom that comes from the top of our political leadership that we have heard during previous crises.

The Dallas Morning News today published an editorial calling for such wisdom as we grapple with issues relating to police brutality and racial injustice. The newspaper cited a speech given by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, at that moment a candidate for president, in the hours after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was felled by an assassin.

RFK said this:

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black — considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization — black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

“Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

“For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

“My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

“So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love — a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

“We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

“But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

Sen. Kennedy spoke those words to a crowd of African-Americans gathered for a political rally in Indianapolis, Ind. While many cities in the land erupted in violence that evening, Indianapolis remained calm. Why? Because citizens were somehow assured that at least one political leader was listening to them and he cared about them.

A gunman would still RFK’s voice forever just two months later.

We are made poorer as a result. We need that kind of wisdom in this moment of grief.

national news

The shock is now aimed at his supporters

Donald Trump’s lack of empathy, compassion or sorrow at the suffering of others never has surprised me.

What continues to blow my mind is the acceptance of this individual’s profound character deficiency by those who think he remains the greatest thing to happen to America since they started putting pockets on shirts.

My … goodness. Trump has revealed for all the world how he lacks empathy toward those who have been stricken by COVID-19 or toward their loved ones who are kept away from COVID patients out of fear they, too, would be contaminated by the viral infection.

He has stressed the economic shutdown and his desire to speed up the reopening of the nation’s business community.

Now comes the George Floyd tragedy that has pushed the pandemic off the front pages if only for a brief period. Has the Numbskull in Chief sought answers to the brutal acts that resulted in Floyd’s death after being suffocated by Minneapolis cops? No. He has focused his anger at the rioters who rushed into the streets in an angry response to Floyd’s death … an African-American man who died while being detained by a white police officer.

Trump has vowed to unleash “thousands and thousands of heavily armed” military personnel to put down even peaceful protests.

None of this should surprise anyone who believes — as I do — that Donald Trump is fundamentally unfit for the office of president.

What I cannot fathom nor will I accept is the belief among Americans that Donald Trump is the man we need in this time of grief and angst. Good ever-lovin’ God in heaven, he is the exact opposite of what we need.

Still, the Donald Trump core of supporters still stands with this guy. How in the name of human decency does that happen?

It will remain a mystery to me for as long as I draw breath.

local news

Unity found in small towns; bigger cities suffer strife

I went to a “unification rally” this week in Princeton, Texas, the city where my wife and I reside.

It’s a small town, but is growing rapidly. I believe the population here is about 15,000 residents. The unification rally was called in the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, where an African-American man died at the hands of cops who treated him with extreme malice and brutality. It proceeded with calm and good manners.

The response to the Floyd tragedy is far different just down the road from Princeton. Dallas is caught up in turmoil and tempest. The police there fired rubber bullets on protesters marching across a bridge that connects downtown Dallas with the western reaches of the city.

Some folks want Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall to resign. If she won’t quit, they want her fired. Hall is standing her ground. I don’t know who’s right in this matter; I wasn’t there. I was busy soaking up the unity being expressed in my Collin County community.

My point, though, is that while there appear to be calls for unification coming from rural communities just like the one where we live, there also appears to be plenty of strife developing in larger cities. Austin had a similar beef that has erupted in Dallas. Other major cities across the nation are enduring emotional conflict and tension as people march for justice and seek reform in the way police departments do their job.

The tension causes me plenty of concern about where we are headed. I do not subscribe to the “defund the police” argument that is getting a voice in some communities. That view suggests rampant corruption and cruelty in all big-city PDs; I do not believe that is the case. Policing is a tough job under the best of circumstances. It becomes exponentially more dangerous when police do not have the support of the community they swear to “protect and serve.”

The nation’s law enforcement community is facing a serious crisis as it seeks to answer the questions that critics are raising about it in the wake of George Floyd’s killing.

The law enforcement crisis isn’t presenting itself in places like Princeton, Texas. It is, though, showing itself in Dallas … and other big cities across the land.

Donald Trump

Worst week of hideous saga coming to an end

I believe it’s fair to suggest that Donald John Trump is coming off the worst week of the presidency he inherited.

It has revealed to the world just how low this individual can go to debase the principles he took an oath to protect.

Let’s ponder a few things that occurred.

George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis; the cops who killed him were fired immediately; one of them was charged with murder and manslaughter, while three others have been charged as well. Trump’s response was to lash out at the protesters; to be fair, many “protests” turned to riots … which drew Trump’s public attention. He has been silent on the issue of how African-Americans are mistreated too often by police agencies.

Trump then vowed to unleash “thousands and thousands of heavily armed” active-duty military personnel to “dominate” the streets of American cities. He said he would use the most potent and lethal military machine in world history on American citizens exercising their rights to protest government policy.

He also used cops and some sort of “secret security force” to clear the streets between the White House and an Episcopal church of peaceful protesters. The cops used tear gas on the protesters. Trum then traipsed to the church, carrying a Bible. He stood before the holy place, held up the Bible … for a photo opportunity! Yes, this individual demonstrated for all the world to see how he is able to use a Holy Bible as a political prop.

The blowback from these repeated demonstrations has been scathing condemnation general-grade officers, including a former defense secretary, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former White House chief of staff, the former special operations commander and an assortment of three- and four-star officers, all of whom have served their country with honor and heroism. 

Oh, and thousands more Americans died from COVID-19, the disease Trump dismissed as no worse than the flu.

I have said it many times and I will say it again and again. Donald Trump is morally, temperamentally and psychologically unfit for the office he holds.

I would suggest that we have witnessed the worst possible week of a presidency in mortal peril of disintegration … except that we have many more weeks ahead of us before we can usher this individual out of the Oval Office for the final time.