Monthly Archives: July 2020

national news

Another icon passes from scene

Americans have been yanked into a long-held reality with the deaths of African-American men at the hands of police officers, which is that justice too often is applied unevenly in this country.

So now, here we are. The nation is mourning a giant of a great cause to bring equal justice, equal rights to all citizens. John Lewis has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years of age.

U.S. Rep. Lewis comes from an era of great struggle. It was a violent time and Lewis, tragically, was the victim of that violence. Police in Alabama beat Lewis to a pulp as he marched along with other black citizens for equal rights. He recovered. Lewis continued to stand tall alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young and other activists of the time seeking justice and liberty for all Americans … regardless of their racial makeup.

“He loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise,” former President Barack Obama wrote in his statement. “And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom and justice but inspired generations that followed to try to live up to his example.”

Lewis took his struggle to the floor of the U.S. House, where he served with honor representing the people of Georgia as a Democratic congressman.

Andrew Young also rose to prominence as well, becoming U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and mayor of Atlanta. He spoke today of his friend’s death and the belief that despite the deaths of so many great civil rights icons, their work and their legacies live on.

The live through their spirit that remains among us, Young said.

So it will be as the nation gets past its time of mourning the death of a real-life, authentic American hero.

Rest in peace, Rep. Lewis. You have done well, but the hard work will continue in your memory.

political news

Shakeup = stability? Seriously?

What in the name of counter-intuitiveness am I missing?

Donald John Trump keeps insisting that his campaign is rockin’ and rollin’ along. That his team is well-oiled, well-groomed and well-positioned to guide Trump to a re-election victory.

Why, then, if Trump’s command structure is so awesome does he change the man who runs it? He replaced campaign manager Brad Parscale with Bill Stepien.

Oh, it must be that Trump is trailing former Vice President Joe Biden — the presumptive Democratic nominee — by double digits. Or it was that disastrous Tulsa, Okla., rally that was supposed to overfill the arena, but drew a crowd that comprised about one-third of the arena’s capacity.

Where I come from, those things tell me that the campaign is in serious trouble. Hence, Donald Trump shook it up.

Time will tell, I suppose, whether this latest rumbling at the top of the Trump campaign team rights the ship. I am highly skeptical. I mean, the team has a boss who’s out of control.

Weird.

education news

Happy to report sanity in our local school system

I am delighted to report some good news — if you allow me to call it that — regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is that our granddaughter and her brother are going to be kept out of their classrooms for at least the first semester of the upcoming academic year. We got the word from our son and daughter-in-law that the Allen (Texas) Independent School District, absent any guarantee that it can prevent spread of the virus in schools, has decided to give parents the option of online schooling at home.

Our son and daughter-in-law have exercised that option.

Thus, the Allen ISD will not follow Donald Trump’s blind and stupid call to reopen our classrooms despite the surge in coronavirus infection in states such as ours.

For the president to insist on school reopening is beyond irresponsible. He exhibits no outward interest in protecting the lives of our precious children and the teachers who expose themselves to potential illness or worse.

So local school districts here in North Texas are calling their own shots. Princeton ISD, where my wife and I live, isn’t going along with the president’s urging. Neither are the Amarillo and Canyon ISDs, from where we moved two years ago. They are going to online teaching, giving students materials they can study at home.

Our granddaughter and her brother — who is entering his senior year in high school — did well in the second half of the preceding school year learning at home. They will do so again once the new year begins in August.

Meanwhile, the search for vaccines continues. May the brainiacs assigned to find them hit pay dirt sooner rather than later.

media news, medical news, national news

Pence is wrong; media telling the truth

REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

Donald Trump’s top-tier toadie, the vice president, has decided that the media are to blame for sowing seeds of panic among Americans concerned about the coronavirus pandemic.

Mike Pence has been wrong about a lot of things. This one ranks near the top.

Vice President Pence spoke this week in defense of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic that has killed 138,000 Americans and infected more than 1 million of us. He then offered a critique of the media, declaring that the media have hit the panic button.

Pence keeps referring to the “whole of government response” that he says has been a success. It has not!

A nation with 4 percent of the world’s population has more than 25 percent of the world’s deaths from the pandemic. That’s how you define success, Mr. VPOTUS?

Donald Trump has failed to lead the nation. He is challenging the expertise of actual medical experts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for school reopening have been pushed to the back of the shelf as Trump insists that schools reopen this fall with classrooms full of children and teachers.

Do I need to remind everyone that Trump said at the beginning of the outbreak that it would disappear … just like that? It hasn’t.

Meanwhile, the media are doing what they are empowered by the U.S. Constitution to do. They are seeking to hold government accountable, which is part of the media’s mission. Every president — until Donald Trump — has understood the media’s role and they have accepted their role as part of the job they inherited.

To that end, Mike Pence is far from alone in criticizing the media’s coverage of the pandemic. He is part of the Trumpster Corps of loyalists that has endorsed Trump’s idiocy that the media are “the enemy of the people.” Therefore, when the media deliver bad or “negative” news, the Trumpsters call it “fake,” when in fact the news is as real as it gets.

This media criticism, which is unfounded, cuts me to the quick. I loved pursuing my journalism craft for more than three decades. It hurts to see newspapers floundering as they are these days. However, there still is some great journalism being practiced. The media are doing their job. They are telling us the hard truth about a disease that is killing and sickening too many Americans.

A big part of that truth the media are telling is that Donald Trump is failing this supreme test of presidential leadership.

local news

Why let an interloper represent the Texas Panhandle in Congress?

I hate what I fear is going to happen to the Texas Panhandle’s 13th Congressional District.

The district’s strong Republican ties are likely to hand the district over to an interloping carpetbagger who doesn’t know the first, second or third thing about the district. But he’s an R and that’s good enough for them.

He is Ronny Jackson, a retired Navy admiral, a physician (and former doc to two presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump). He doesn’t know Pantex from Spic ‘n Span, but he’s going to represent the district for at least the next two years after they count the votes in the November election.

I’ll get to the glimmer of good news in just a bit.

I maintain an interest in the 13th District, even though I no longer live there, because my wife and lived there longer than we have anywhere else during our 48 years of married life. The congressman who is leaving Congress, Mac Thornberry, took office the same week I reported for duty at the Amarillo Globe-News in January 1995. So I have told Thornberry that he and I “grew up together” in the Panhandle.

Thornberry, though, has deep roots there, growing up on a ranch in Donley County. So he knows the district he has represented for 25 years … unlike Dr. Jackson — a native of Levelland — who took up residence there only to run for the office he thinks is ripe for the picking. And he’s right.

But … here comes the glimmer of good news.

He won the endorsement of Donald Trump in his primary race. Indeed, Jackson — from all I’ve heard — has spoken only about his close he is to Trump, that he is wedded to the president’s agenda … whatever the hell that is.

The good news? Trump is on course at this moment of losing his bid for re-election. Bigly! He has bungled the presidency at every turn. He has clearly mismanaged the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has sought to divide the nation. Trump spews racist-sounding thoughts.

It is my fondest hope that Joe Biden defeats Trump. If that comes to pass, then what becomes of Dr. Jackson’s main selling point he is using to land a seat in Congress? He likely will be hard-pressed to get the time of day from a Biden administration.

Would that mean it’s one term and then out for the doc?

I just know that my friends in the Texas Panhandle deserve a whole lot better from their congressman than they’re about to receive. At the very least they deserve to be represented by someone who knows the issues relevant to the region.

military news

Strike the Confederate colors!

Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote the following today in a memorandum that has gotten worldwide attention: “The flags we fly must accord with the military imperatives of good order and discipline, treating all our people with dignity and respect, and rejecting divisive symbols.”

You only get a single guess on which flag he targeted with this message. Time’s up.

Yep, it’s the Confederate flag, which has been banned at all military installations. Period. Full stop.

I am going to hand it to Mark Esper. His order flies directly into a headwind created by opposition from the commander in chief, Donald Trump, who has made no secret of his outrage over the Confederate flag being targeted as a symbol of hate and national division … which it most certainly is.

Trump has this peculiar affection for the rebel flag, which to my eye symbolizes bloodshed, treason and enslavement.

We fought the nation’s bloodiest conflict, the Civil War, with one side rallying under that flag on the battlefield, where more than 600,000 Americans died. The Confederate States of America committed treason by rebelling against the federal government, seeking to overthrow it … and why? Because the CSA wanted to retain the right of states to allow people to keep other people enslaved.

There you have it. Defense Secretary Esper says all flags that fly on U.S. military installations must comport with the ideals of the nation. Slavery and treason aren’t part of the package.

Now I am wondering at this moment whether the commander in chief is going to override that order. Donald Trump has the legal authority to do it. Will he dare?

Donald Trump

Yes, I believe Mary Trump

I am trying to decide if I want to purchase Mary Trump’s bombshell book about her uncle, the current president of the United States.

She doesn’t need my money to make the fortune she already has earned by early sales of “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” I hear she’s sold nearly a million copies of her book.

But there’s another reason why I might not read the book from cover to cover. From what she has said so far in TV interviews, there’s nothing she has revealed about Uncle Donald that I don’t already believe.

I believe he is the “virulent racist” Mary Trump says he is. I believe the assertions she has made about his use of the N-word and the anti-Semitic slurs he has uttered. I also actually believe that young Donald got someone else to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test he needed to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania.

I believe Donald Trump is as vile, venal and vengeful as Mary Trump reportedly portrays.

She won’t change my mind one little bit about this individual.

So, it falls on me to decide whether I want to spend money on a book that likely won’t tell me anything I don’t already believe.

Mary Trump is no interloper. Her father, Donald Trump’s brother, died of alcohol abuse. She has no relationship with Uncle Donald. Still, she is highly educated, earning multiple degrees and carving out a career as a clinical psychologist.

She seems credible to me.

I am left to wonder whether it also will ring true to those who keep giving Uncle Donald a pass on the conduct in which he engaged for his entire adult life.

medical news, national news

What happened to the summer pandemic miracle?

I’m trying to recall something I thought I heard from Donald John “Miracle Man in Chief” Trump.

Back when the coronavirus was taking wing, I thought I heard Trump declare that the virus would disappear miraculously when temperatures heated up in the country. Didn’t he say that?

Well, here we are. The southern regions of the country, from Arizona to Florida, are roasting in 100-plus-degree temperatures.

Oh, wait! Where is the spike in COVID-19 infection occurring? It’s in the southern parts of the United States of America.

So, what happened to Trump’s prediction? Hey, I get it. He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about then. He doesn’t know now.

medical news, national news

Georgia governor: No. 1 knucklehead

I hereby nominate Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as Knucklehead of the Month, maybe the year.

How did the Republican governor earn this dubious distinction? By issuing an executive order that overrides local officials in Georgia who have ordered residents to wear masks to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

What in the name of public safety has gotten into Kemp?

Kemp issued the order because, by golly, he just doesn’t see the need to wear masks. He ignores the stern and serious advice from damn near every medical professional on Earth who tell us that masks — along with social distancing — are sure-fire preventatives against the disease that continues to sicken and kill Americans.

I am heartened that fellow Republican governors — such as Texas’ Greg Abbott — see the situation quite differently. Abbott has gone in the opposite direction, ordering masks when Texans venture into indoor settings.

Moreover, companies that are doing business in Georgia have ordered their employees and customers who enter their establishments to wear masks. That means that Gov. Kemp can issue executive orders until the cows come home, some folks in his state aren’t going to listen.

This is part and parcel of what has happened in this country. We have politicized a global pandemic that is taking no prisoners. The coronavirus has killed 138,000 Americans. It has sickened more than 3 million of us. Our nation’s rate of death and infection far exceed the percentage of the worldwide population that resides in the United States.

And yet we have Republican politicians — led by the Idiot in Chief, Donald Trump — flouting medical advice by refusing to wear masks. Their political followers walk in lockstep with them, refusing to maintain proper distance. What happens then? The rate of infection skyrockets, right along with the rate of hospitalization … and death!

Then we get my nominee for Knucklehead of the Month issuing an idiotic executive order that seeks to override local officials’ tough decisions on how to keep their constituents safe from a viral infection that could kill them.

Stupidity is alive inside the Georgia statehouse.

medical news, State news

Abbott draws fire from his fellow Rs … amazing!

Pardon me for a moment while I, um, LOL.

Yes, the reason for my guffaw has been the response from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s fellow Republicans over the governor’s conversion to a get-tough politician waging war against the coronavirus pandemic.

Actually, Abbott is drawing heavy fire from both sides of the divide. Democrats are angry that Abbott acted too quickly to reopen the state. Now it’s Republicans who are spittin’ mad at Abbott because he realizes he erred the first time.

So, Abbott has dialed back the state’s reopening plans. He has mandated mask-wearing as a preventative measure against the virus; he also has mandated social distancing and told businesses they have to scale back their occupancy rates.

What is hilarious — in a sickening sort of way — has been the response from GOP-leaning businessmen and women. One of them is a friend of mine. He runs a small business in Amarillo. He displays a picture of President Reagan prominently where customers buy their products. My friend’s GOP credentials are real and I respect them.

But now that Abbott is acting to protect Texans’ lives and health against the killer virus, my friend has taken to calling the governor a dictator. I think he used the word “communist” in a social media post complaining about Abbott’s order to shut certain businesses down.

I happen to be upset that Abbott acted too quickly when he sought to reopen the state’s business infrastructure. We are paying the price at this moment.

However, I support the governor’s decision to dial it back and believe he is acting responsibly now. My family and I are wearing masks when we venture out. We are keeping our distance from others. We are wiping down surfaces with sanitary wipes and we keep alcohol-based sanitizer handy at all times.

Do I feel sorry for the governor? Not for a second. He gets the big bucks to make the correct decisions. He made the wrong one, then has tried to correct it. I hate to say that do-overs aren’t allowed.