Monthly Archives: July 2020

State news

Kinky Friedman: ahead of his time

I enjoy looking back on musings I pushed out via my blog, seeking to find common ground with current events.

On July 28, 2010, I wrote a short piece about Kinky Friedman, the fascinating humorist who once ran for Texas governor. He was one of the more provocative and interesting political interviews I ever conducted.

He spoke about a notion that was getting some traction among Texas Republicans. He opposed building a wall along our southern border.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2010/07/where-have-you-been-kinky/

I won’t give up with this blog post what he said then, but I do want to alert you to what feared might occur in the United States if matters kept spiraling in a direction that Kinky didn’t like. Just check out the item I have attached to this post.

Kinky Friedman was way ahead of his time.

medical news

Lo and behold, Trump dons a mask!

Well now, that wasn’t so bad, was it Mr. President?

Donald Trump had infamously avoided wearing a surgical mask in public, despite pleas from his coronavirus pandemic response team that masks are an essential preventive measure against the killer virus.

Trump said he thought the masks looked bad for the president of the United States. How utterly, completely ridiculous!

He went to Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., today to visit with some of our wounded warriors. He wore the mask and allowed pictures of him to be snapped and distributed around the world.

Did anyone on Earth laugh out loud at the sight of Donald Trump wearing a mask? I don’t think so, even though there might have been some giggling at the idiocy expressed by Trump about his reluctance to wear a mask.

Masks serve a dual purpose. They protect the health of those who wear them. They also protect those who stand near the person wearing the mask.

So, it’s not about whether someone looks good wearing a mask. It’s about protecting people’s health and possibly saving their lives.

The president needs to lead in that effort and ditch that moronic notion that we have this virus “under control.” We don’t. Donald Trump needs to wear a mask whenever he ventures into public view.

education news, local news, medical news, national news

Knock off threats to schools, Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump is now putting heat on governors to reopen public school systems, much like he tried to browbeat houses of worship leaders into packing pews in time for Easter and threatened governors to reopen their states … or else.

There is no “or else” for the president, given that he has no singular authority to tell governors how to run their states as they cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now he’s going after them on school reopening.

I found this quote from a former member of Congress, a guy I know, but who I haven’t spoken to in more than two decades. Former Rep. Nick Lampson writes: School re-openings must be based on science not the ineptitude of Donald Trump. We have a collective responsibility to protect the interests of America’s youth. Expecting kids to spend 8 hours a day in close quarters during a pandemic and threatening to defund public schools like some sort of authoritarian is not the sort of leadership we need in the White House.

Here in Texas, and specifically in Collin County, our school leaders are giving parents the option of sending their children back to the classroom or keep them at home in a sort of hybrid learning environment. Texas’s infection rate is soaring. We do not want our children exposed needlessly just because Donald Trump wants schools to reopen their classrooms.

While I am on the subject, Donald and Melania Trump have a son in school. Are they sending Barron back to class? I am not going to make the youngster an issue; I merely am asking the question to ascertain what kind of parental decisions the first couple are making with regard to their own son.

As for the rest of us, Donald Trump ought to let governors and the public educators who deserve praise and not threats decide how to handle their unique situations.

legal news

SCOTUS justices provide satisfaction

I took more than a little bit of satisfaction from this week’s stunning decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that no president is above the law.

My satisfaction came in the form of two justices’ decision to side with the 7 to 2 majority that declared that Donald Trump cannot invoke presidential immunity no matter what, that a Manhattan, N.Y., prosecutor is entitled to obtain Trump’s financial records in a probe that could result in some serious criminal indictments.

Those two justices happen to Donald Trump’s two nominees to the highest court in America: Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Let’s presume Trump’s ignorance of the law and the Constitution for a moment and conclude that the president had hoped Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would stand with him. I mean, Trump does demand loyalty even from members of an independent and co-equal branch of the federal government. The justices didn’t do as Trump no doubt wanted.

This gives me hope on at least one important matter. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh likely will sit in their high offices long after Trump leaves his office. Trump said he wanted to appoint rock-ribbed, true-blue conservatives to the federal judiciary, which is another way of saying he wants judges who will vote in his favor at all costs.

Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh saw the question arising from the Trump finances case differently. They interpreted the law with no regard to how it might affect Trump’s continuing refusal to release his financial records to prosecutors.

I cannot predict whether Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will continue to demonstrate their judicial independence on future cases. The Supreme Court term has ended; justices will return to the bench in October, just ahead of the November presidential election.

I am hoping the election will deliver a new president who then will take over the appointment powers from a president who doesn’t grasp that the concept of an independent judiciary is inscribed in our nation’s governing document.

I am going to hope that the men who ended up on the court because Donald Trump nominated them will continue to exhibit the independence they showed in determining that no one — not even the president of the United States — is immune from criminal prosecution.

local news

Happy birthday, Mom

My mother once told me that she thinks of her late father “every single day.”

I don’t remember precisely when Mom said that; I think I was a teenager, which means that like most pearls of wisdom I got from Mom or Dad, it went in ear and out the other.

She lost her father in January 1950. He was in early 60s. Mom was not quite 27 when my grandfather died. Mom was 61 when she died in 1984 and I was not quite 34 years of age when I lost her. So there’s a certain symmetry, I suppose, between those two events.

But now that I am a whole lot older and perhaps a bit wiser (although that’s surely a debatable point) I understand more fully Mom’s notion that she thought of her father daily even all those years after his passing.

It’s been nearly 36 years since Mom died. Today she would have turned 97 years of age.

I think of her every single day. It’s usually a fleeting thought. I might conjure up a quip she would offer. For example, our older son was visiting us recently. We were chatting about the space program. I told my son that his grandmother hated the name “Cape Canaveral,” the place where NASA launches rocket ships, because it sounded like “Cape Cadaver.” We had a nice laugh over that gem from my son’s grandmother. She had a million of ’em.

I have thought often about how Mom would have grown old. I believe in my heart she would have done so with grace and good humor had she not been robbed of her essence by the killer disease known as Alzheimer’s. I no longer dwell on it. Time has soothed much of the pain of losing her. But not all of it.

I think of her daily. Today I want to wish her a happy birthday and to tell her: Mom, I now understand why the memory of those you love never leaves you.

national news

Wondering about post-Trump era

3 Comments
 REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger

I admit it freely and without reservation: My mind tends to wander during its idle moments.

My wife and I took a dip in the pool today to fend off the 100-degree heat and while soaking myself I began to ponder the post-Donald Trump era in U.S. politics.

First I shall stipulate, as if it needs stipulation, that I hope that era begins in January 2021 and not January 2025. We have an election coming up and as of this moment, the trend is looking good for the challenger, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But … you know what they say about a week being like a lifetime in politics. Still, I cannot turn the mind-idle off.

What would happen if Donald Trump is staring at the reality of losing an election, that Biden has racked up enough Electoral College votes to win? Does he pick up the phone, call Biden and wish him well? Does he say, “You fought hard and well, Mr. President-elect. I will do what I can to assure a smooth transition”?

Then we have the issue of where Trump would go. One of these days — and I damn sure hope it’s soon — he’ll walk to the helicopter on the White House lawn and fly away. Will he go to Mar-a-Lago, Fla., or to Bedminster, or to Trump Tower? What will he and Melania discuss on their first full day as civilians?

This question perhaps is most maddening of all: Where does Donald Trump plan to build a presidential library? Even more puzzling is what in the world is going to be his overarching theme? Economic revival? Fighting disease? Seeking to kick illegal immigrants out of the country? Ending the Affordable Care Act? Ridding the nation of anything associated with President Barack Obama?

Former presidents often receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Obama bestowed it on Presidents Bush 41 and Bill Clinton. He didn’t do the same for President Bush 43, but I wish he had done so. Would a President Biden honor Donald Trump in this fashion? Hah! Not a chance, given the defamatory epithets that Trump has hurled at Biden.

Trump vowed to be a “different” kind of president. I suppose you could say he’s delivered on that promise in spades. I don’t know what kind of former president he will become. All I am hoping for at this moment of idle time is that we’ll know sooner rather than later.

national news

Where are the GOP ‘heroes’?

What you see here is a Twitter message fired off by U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, the freshman Utah Republican who, during Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, cast the only GOP vote to convict Trump on an abuse of power allegation brought by the House of Representatives.

Now, Trump has commuted the 40-month federal prison sentence of Roger Stone, POTUS’s longtime political ally and personal friend.

Romney so far has emerged as the only Republican in either congressional chamber with a semblance of a spine. His tweet condemning the commutation speaks volumes about why Trump’s decision is so terribly self-serving and dangerous.

I am thinking now of something the great journalist Carl Bernstein, who covered the Watergate scandal in the 1970s for the Washington Post, recently said about how that scandal unfolded, leading eventually to President Nixon’s resignation.

Bernstein talked about the Republican “heroes” who emerged to challenge the president directly. They stood on the principle that no one is above the law and that they, in good conscience, could not support the GOP president who had covered up his campaign’s participation in the burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices.

Those heroes, Bernstein said, are what brought an end to what became known as “our long national nightmare.”

Where in the name of political heroism are the rest of the GOP congressional caucus when it concerns this president?

Sen. Romney, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, is standing alone against the cult of personality that Donald Trump has created?

national news

Oh, for an end to the chaos

2 Comments

I told you this would happen.

Yes, I called it. I will stand by what I said would be the result of Donald John Trump serving as president of the United States.

It would be that he would bring chaos and confusion from the campaign trail straight into the Oval Office; that his ignorance of government would be on full display almost daily; that his background of self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment and narcissism would become evident in a man with not a single moment of public service experience.

Many of you didn’t listen to what your humble blogger said would occur. Had there been a 40,000-vote flip in three critical states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — we would be free of this madness.

And I do mean “madness.”

Donald Trump’s commuting of Roger Stone’s federal prison sentence because he is so very loyal to Trump wouldn’t have happened. We wouldn’t have witnessed the entire array of bizarre rulings, policy pronouncements and the revolving door spinning wildly as officials are fired/resigning.

All of this was visible and predictable the moment Donald Trump rode down the escalator to declare his intention to run for president. To be honest, I thought in the moment he was performing some sort of publicity stunt. Silly me. That’s what I got, I guess, for thinking.

I believe firmly we cannot afford any more of this chaos. I want a change in our national leadership, but that’s no surprise to readers of this blog. I want to elect a politician who (a) knows the Constitution, (b) appreciates the limits of executive power in our government and (c) can express authentic empathy for the pain we are enduring.

legal news

Commutation, not a pardon, for Roger Stone

This is among the most unsurprising stories of the Donald Trump administration: Trump commuted the sentence of one of his closest confidants and political fixers.

Roger Stone was facing a 40-month prison sentence. Until today, when Trump commuted his sentence.

Now, in a way I am somewhat heartened that Trump didn’t issue a blanket pardon for Stone, a decision that would have wiped the record of his conviction for lying under oath off the books. With a commutation, the guilty verdict stands … for whatever it’s worth.

Stone has been a longstanding pal of Trump. He’s been an even more longstanding Republican Party dirty trickster/operative.

He had lied about what he knew about Donald Trump’s campaign shenanigans. According to the Business Insider: A jury convicted Stone of seven felony counts in November, none of which included collusion or conspiracy. The former strategist was convicted of five counts of making false statements to the FBI and congressional investigators, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction of justice.

Stone won’t serve any time behind bars. Does this mean a pardon is out of the question? Hardly. Trump might pardon Stone before leaving office, which I hope is very soon … as in January 2021.

But this decision — or a form of it — was expected all along.

It’s all part and parcel of the way Donald Trump rolls.

medical news

Dr. Fauci offers grim prognosis

“I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. We’re just not.”

That clearly is not the view expressed repeatedly by Donald John “Prevaricator in Chief” Trump. It is instead an opinion offered by the nation’s — if not the world’s — leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci is seriously concerned about the terrible spike in infection, hospitalization and death caused by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

The doc is contradicting directly the man for whom he works, the president of the United States. I am going to stand with the doctor’s view on where we stand in this fight against the pandemic.

Trump, meanwhile, is fighting for his political life and the pandemic — namely the federal response to it — isn’t providing Trump much ammo to use in his re-election campaign. Indeed, Donald Trump’s arsenal is spent; he is out of ammunition.

How in the world does the nation fight its way back from the medical brink? There is increasing talk about states returning to their shelter in place policies, shutting down businesses they had reopened, ordering Americans to do certain things to prevent the spread of the virus.

In Texas, where officials sought to restart the economy, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a mandatory mask-wearing order, told businesses to scale back their service to 50 percent of capacity. Yes, he has drawn fire for his order, namely from Republicans — if you can fathom that — who continue to insist that we reopen the business community despite the threat to people’s health and their very lives.

As for Dr. Fauci, he well might be writing his exit from the White House pandemic response team, where he has played a once-significant role that has been diminished of late because of Fauci’s disagreement with Donald Trump. Indeed, Trump has been critical openly of the good doctor, saying he has committed many “mistakes.” I haven’t heard a single example of what Trump considers to be a Fauci mistake.

Still, I am going to listen to the doctor. I am going to ignore the blathering of the politicians … especially the nation’s top pol, the guy who couldn’t tell us the unvarnished truth if his political career depended on it.

Oh, wait … !