Monthly Archives: August 2020

medical news

Reform the ACA

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)

Joe Biden has made himself quite clear on a number of issues as he seeks to remove Donald J. Trump from the presidency.

One of those issues is health care. He doesn’t favor Medicare for All. Instead, he wants to improve, reform, tinker with the Affordable Care Act to make it work better for millions of Americans.

I happen to agree with the former vice president who, you might recall, whispered into Obama’s ear at the signing ceremony that it is a “big fu**ing deal.”

Indeed, The Hill newspaper reports: Biden’s campaign sent a press release to supporters advertising the gift of a sticker reading “Obamacare: It’s a BFD” after his fellow 2020 contenders attacked his health care policy that seeks to “protect and build on Obamacare.”

Biden helped craft the ACA. The rollout was pretty much a catastrophe, shutting down the government’s website created to assist Americans in signing up for the health care package. However, they fixed that aspect of the ACA.

The rest of it hasn’t gone swimmingly, although millions of Americans now have health insurance who didn’t have it before the ACA was enacted in 2010.

Donald Trump swore when he was elected that he would eliminate the ACA. He calls it a “disaster,” just as he calls anything associated with President Obama a “disaster.” Of course, Trump has no plan to take the ACA’s place. The Supreme Court has delivered a body blow to the dump-the-ACA movement by ruling against legal challenges to the law.

The ACA isn’t perfect. President Obama even recognizes that reality. He has said repeatedly he would welcome improvements to the law. Improvements aren’t part of the Donald Trump strategy. He wants to erase Barack Obama’s name from everything in sight. Why? Who the hell knows?

Joe Biden’s resistance to Medicare for All is partly due to his role in crafting the ACA and his public service career as a mainstream center/left Democrat. He is not a socialist, as Trump would have us believe. He wants to work within the current government and economic system to provide, among other things, affordable health care for Americans.

To that end, my hope — should Biden win the election for president — is for him to craft a comprehensive improvement package that makes the Affordable Care Act truly affordable for all Americans.

national news

Reprehensible response!

Donald Trump received a grooved pitch straight into the strike zone … and he whiffed.

On purpose!

Trump today was asked to disavow a racist rant that Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not qualified to run because her parents are immigrants.

“If she has a problem you would have thought she would have been vetted by Sleepy Joe (Biden),” Trump said.

Do you get it? Trump won’t say the right thing, which is:

“Of course I disavow this rant. It has no place in a discussion of presidential politics. The Constitution stipulates that candidates for president and vice president must be ‘natural born’ U.S. citizens, either by their birthplace or the citizenship of their parents. Sen. Harris was born in Oakland, Calif., and she certainly qualifies. Now, let’s squash this nonsense.”

But … the Racist in Chief didn’t go there.

Donald Trump is consciously, deliberately appealing to the very worst in his base of supporters. He is an utter disgrace!

local news

Happy Trails, Part 185: Comfy in my own skin

The farther my wife and I travel down the road on our retirement journey, the more comfortable I become in my own skin.

I never felt discomfort in who I am, or what I did for a living. I was a proud practitioner of my craft as a print journalist. I believe I enjoyed some modest success along a 37-year ride through four newspapers in two states.

It ended less than happily nearly eight years ago.

Retirement was thrust upon my wife and me. What I find interesting now that I have traveled down the retirement road is my total comfort in going about my business each day as a retired individual.

There actually was a time not long after I retired that I felt a bit strange telling strangers that I am retired. I say “strange” only because I had been a working guy since I was 16 years of age. So, the word “retired” didn’t flow out of my mouth with quite the comfort it does today, at this moment in my life.

To be clear, I am working part time … on my own terms as a freelance reporter for a weekly newspaper in Collin County. It’s a blast, man. I get to cover a city council and write the occasional feature story to which I get get assigned by my bosses. The gig keeps me fresh and keeps me enjoying a part of the career I cherished pursuing.

Maybe it’s a natural progression for those who move from working life to retired life. Given that I have no prior experience, I only can offer conjecture to what I am experiencing.

To be frank, I rather like the feel of my own skin these days.

Retirement feels more right than ever.

national news

Recess context is appalling

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Surely I am not the only red-blooded American patriot who finds the current congressional recess appalling.

Why? Because of the job that the House and Senate have left undone before they shoved off on their lengthy time away from doing the people’s work.

Both legislative chambers — which are getting no help from the White House — have so far failed to provide relief for Americans caught in the pandemic vise. What makes this so terrible, so galling, so appalling is that while Americans are suffering from job loss, the loss of their medical coverage and possibly even their homes, members of Congress have jobs to which they will retain even while they are cavorting through their districts or perhaps jetting off on those infamous “junkets” to glamor spots around the world.

Do you get my drift here?

Americans are hurting because of the economic hardship brought to them by the pandemic. They depend on their elected representatives and, yes, even the president, to help them with assistance from a government that is assigned to look out for them and to provide for the “general welfare” of the public.

They are failing. Who pays the price? The public is paying grievously.

Let me be clear on this point: My wife and I are not among those who are suffering. We are retired from our careers and we live a quiet but comfortable life in Collin County, Texas. We don’t get out much, owing to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 viral pandemic.

Other Americans aren’t nearly as fortunate as we have been.

They are looking for unemployment compensation assistance. Republicans want to scale it way back; Democrats are fighting for more money.

Oh, and Donald Trump? He’s threatening to gut the U.S. Postal Service because he doesn’t want mail-in voting — believing it will hurt his re-election chances. The upshot is to stall any sort of legislation that would assist Americans in need of help from the government during this perilous time.

This is yet another example of disgraceful demagoguery.

Meanwhile, Congress is failing as well. House members and senators are leaving their constituents in the lurch while they take time away from doing their job.

Their job is to legislate.

national news

Why discuss this … at all?

I cannot believe we are engaging in yet another discussion of “birtherism” involving a prominent American politician.

The defamation of Sen. Kamala Harris shouldn’t even be discussed at any level, except for one major point: One of the principals involved in this matter happens to be Donald John “Fake News Master in Chief” Trump.

Harris came into this world in Oakland, Calif. Her Indian mother delivered her after conceiving her with her Jamaican husband. Donald Trump has given this hideous matter a bit of air simply by stating he would “look at” whether she is qualified to run for vice president on the Democratic Party ticket.

This is ridiculous. It also is a blatantly racist attack on a woman who has risen dramatically to national stature after assuming her U.S. Senate seat in 2017.

One might have hoped, albeit naively, that the birther issue had died when Barack Obama left the presidency. It hasn’t, quite obviously. What does the Obama birther matter have in common with Kamala Harris? Donald Trump was part of the Birther Brigade that spread the lie about Obama, just as he has joined the crew that is smearing Kamala Harris with the same defamatory idiocy.

I would say that we “deserve better” from the president of the United States. However, I have to remind myself that the racist managed to get elected to the office he occupies. We just cannot mess up a second time around.

local news

Get ready for a blowhard

Based on what I have witnessed from afar and from my extensive knowledge of the man who has represented the 13th Congressional District of Texas since 1995, voters in that part of the world are about to get a whole new brand of congressman.

Dr. Ronny Jackson is the odds-on favorite to succeed Mac Thornberry as the Republican representative for the sprawling West Texas congressional district.

My knowledge of Jackson is limited. I acknowledge the obvious, given that I no longer live in the district. I know that he was born in Levelland, went into the Navy, achieved the rank of rear admiral, became a physician and has served as White House doctor for three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

He moved into the13th District when Thornberry announced he wouldn’t seek another term.

What is the difference that will occur? It will arrive in the vocal, more media-hungry style of the new guy. He is going to become a right-wing blowhard, the type of individual who generally annoys the daylights out of me. 

He has popped off, for instance, about mask wearing in light of the global pandemic. He has been dismissive of masks as protection against the killer virus. It’s the kind of baloney we hear from right-wing talking heads and various politicians such as, oh, Rep. Louie Gohmert, the East Texas loon who tested positive for the virus after making a public show of his refusal to wear a mask; Louie is singing a different tune these days.

Thornberry has served the13th District for 25 years. He won election in 1994 as part of the GOP Contract With America Brigade led by fire-breathing Rep. New Gingrich. Thornberry, though, became a quiet back bencher for much of his time in the House. He voted according to the Gingrich world view. He didn’t say much about anything publicly.

Rep. Thornberry was able to parlay his loyal service into the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee, where he served for a couple of terms before Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 election; he now serves — again, quietly — as the panel’s ranking member.

And so, Thornberry will leave at the end of the year. Jackson figures to win election over the Democrats’ sacrificial lamb. I will lay down a bet that Jackson will preen and pose for as long as he can, although some of that might be dictated by whether Donald Trump is still president after Election Day.

Whatever. A new day in congressional representation awaits my friends and former neighbors up yonder in the Texas Panhandle.

national news

Not so strange after all

Media pundits continue to make something of a ruckus over the recent political history involving Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris, that Harris roughed up Biden in a couple of debates before she dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.

They’re now on the same Democratic ticket. So I am left to wonder: Why the fascination? It’s hardly the first time political rivals have hooked up, buried the hatchet and locked arms in the fight against a common opponent.

In 1960, Sens. Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy fought for the Democratic nomination. They spoke harshly of each other. LBJ pulled out at the end of that primary fight. JFK was looking for someone to help strengthen him in the South. So he turned to Sen. Johnson. They won that race. Fate, though, tragically intervened when JFK died from an assassin’s bullet in November 1963.

In 1980, former Gov. Ronald Reagan and former CIA director/U.N. ambassador/former congressman/former special envoy to China George H.W. Bush butted heads for the Republican nomination. Bush chided Reagan’s fiscal policy as “voodoo economics.” Reagan survived and then selected Bush to be his VP. The two of them served together through two successful terms.

In 2008, for heaven’s sake, Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden fought for their party’s nomination. Biden didn’t last long. He took his shots at Obama, who fired back at his foe. Obama got nominated and had Biden at his side for two terms.

So now it’s Sen. Harris who’s being examined. Is she loyal enough? Does the presumptive nominee trust her to be a team player?

Biden has been through the VP vetting process. He knows what to ask, where to look.

Harris’s selection is historic. Many have made much of that fact, given her racial and ethnic background. Biden’s decision to select her, though, doesn’t look like much of a gamble. LBJ, George H.W. Bush and Biden himself already have blazed recent trails that led them all to the vice presidency.

Let’s worry less about the recent past between these two politicians and concern ourselves more with the policy positions they share and will take to the fight against Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

It’s game on, man!

International news

Peace Prize? Hah!

Donald Trump’s fans and friends in the right-wing media wasted no time in suggesting that Trump should be a “frontrunner” for the Nobel Peace Prize.

How come? Because the United Arab Emirates and Israel have announced plans to establish diplomatic relations. The UAE becomes the third Arab nation to exchange ambassadors with Israel, joining Jordan and Egypt.

Is this a big deal? Well, yes. It is. Is it Nobel Peace Prize material? Not even close.

I should point out that the UAE does not border Israel, unlike Jordan and Egypt. Nor does the UAE pose a serious military threat to Israel.

A Nobel Peace Prize ought to come in this context if, for instance, a U.S. president would broker a deal that stops Hamas from lobbing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Or perhaps he could negotiate a deal that disarms Hezbollah, the terrorists who occupy Lebanon and launch attacks on Israel along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Hey, I am willing to give props to Trump for whatever role his administration played in bringing about this deal between Israel and the UAE. A Nobel Peace Prize, though, isn’t in the cards.

national news

Where is the GOP hiding?

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What used to be known as a great American political party has gone into hiding.

They call themselves “Republicans,” but they aren’t really anything of the kind. They are “Trumpkins” beholden to some guy who ran for president in 2016 under the Republican banner. He isn’t an actual Republican. He just portrays one while sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

I ask the question about where the GOP is hiding because Donald Trump — the aforementioned POTUS masquerading as a Republican — is seeking to undermine a free and fair election. He speaks for Republicans, he says, because they would be harmed by an effort to allow voters to cast their ballots by mail this November.

Republicans should be joining their Democratic colleagues in Congress in bellowing their displeasure at what is trying to do to the U.S. Postal Service. They aren’t. They are silent. Democrats are doing all the griping. They note that efforts to inhibit the USPS violates the U.S. Constitution, which mentions the “Post Office” specifically in Article I. The “Postal Clause” was added “to facilitate interstate communication as well as to create a source of revenue for the early United States,” according to Wikipedia.

So, why aren’t congressional Republicans upset at what Donald Trump is trying to do? He is seeking to usurp the Postal Service’s duties delineated by the Constitution.

State election officials stand by their staffs’ ability to conduct elections without the “rampant fraud” that Trump — without evidence — keeps alleging.

And yet, congressional Republicans continue to stand by the phony Republican in the White House who has admitted in plain sight to anyone who cares to listen that he is trying to protect his backside at the expense of allowing voters to perform their civic responsibility.

The GOP silence is deafening in the extreme.

national news

Welcome back, Mr. POTUS 44

Barack Obama appears to be getting back into the game.

He’s been out of action since leaving the presidency in January 2017. I reckon he has seen and heard enough from Donald J. Trump to bring him back into the action.

President Obama is all in with the man who served as vice president during his two terms in office. He is thoroughly and completely behind Joe Biden. That is no surprise, of course. The two men, Obama and Biden, forged a remarkably close personal and professional relationship for eight years in the White House.

I have learned recently that their friendship didn’t materialize immediately after they took office, but that it evolved and developed over time. At the end of his time as president, Obama was referring to himself and his family as “honorary Bidens.” He has called Joe Biden his “brother.”

So it has developed and matured.

After nearly four years of Donald Trump, though, and listening to Trump’s constant drumbeat of denigration of his time in office, I figure President Obama believes he needs to do what he can to remove Trump from an office he never should have won in the first place.

To be fair, Trump did win. Along the way to the White House, Trump continued to belittle Obama’s record. Since taking office, Trump has sought specifically to erase Obama’s name from legislative accomplishments. Target No. 1 has been the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic legislative achievement. The ACA remains in effect, more or less, but Trump continues to vow to remove it forever. Is there a replacement? Umm. No.

As one American voter who wants Trump defeated, I am going to welcome Barack Obama back into the fight. He remains a U.S. citizen and is entitled to speak his mind whenever he pleases. Yes, it is not “normal” for a former president to weigh in so heavily.

But … what the hey. Let’s watch the battle be joined.