Tag Archives: CNN

national news

Teacher emerges as hero

Megan Silberberger likely didn’t ever envision her job requiring this kind of heroism.

When a young freshman high school student began shooting at classmates this past week in Marysville, Wash., Silberberger did a profoundly heroic deed. She confronted the shooter and ordered him to stop.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/26/us/washington-school-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Witnesses have said Silberberger grabbed the shooter’s arm and, in effect, neutralized him, if only for a moment.

The boy, Jaylen Fryberg, would then turn the gun on himself and end his life.

One other student by then had been shot dead and four others had been wounded.

The tragedy had come to a sudden end.

Details of the confrontation haven’t yet been released through official channels, but enough eyewitness accounts of what people saw cast Megan Silberberger as the hero in this tragic event.

CNN.com reported: “Police have not yet said how many shots in total were fired, but there was at least one bullet left in the cartridge before the confrontation with Silberberger — because the final shot was the one that ended Fryberg’s life. A Beretta .40-caliber handgun believed used in the shooting has been traced to Fryberg’s father, according to the source.”

How does one explain such a tragedy?

Fryberg was known to be a popular student. He’d been named homecoming prince at Marysville Pilchuck High School. He was popular — quite obviously — among his peers at the suburban Seattle school. He also was described as a “happy” boy. What set off this rampage is now Question No. 1 for school and law enforcement authorities.

But these tragedies occasionally have ways of producing characters worthy of high praise.

I hope we’ll know more in due course about what is believed to be known about Megan Silberberger’s actions that day in the high school cafeteria.

I also hope she’ll recover emotionally from the extreme danger she faced down, likely never expecting such mind-blowing trauma when she went to work that day.

 

International news

Well done, Anderson Cooper

Critiquing media isn’t usually my bag, although lately I’ve been beating up on TV cable news networks over their coverage of Ebola.

That said, allow me a tip of the cap, or a nod, or salute to CNN’s Anderson Cooper for refusing to take a “selfie” with a local TV reporter who spotted Cooper near the site of the Canadian Parliament shooting in Ottawa.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/23/anderson-cooper-aghast-when-reporter-asks-him-to-take-selfie-near-ottawa-shooting-scene/

The reporter wanted to take the picture with Cooper near where one victim was killed and the shooter himself was killed by the Parliament’s sergeant-at-arms, Kevin Vickers — who I already have saluted in an earlier blog post.

The young reporter apparently was caught up in the moment and wanted to share some misplaced “glory” with an international media personality, such as Cooper.

His response? “It seems wildly inappropriate,” Cooper told the young man.

Journalists have a fairly well-defined list of things they shouldn’t do when covering a story. They don’t cheer for political candidates or athletic teams; they don’t demonstrate displeasure in either instance; they don’t act overly friendly or unfriendly with sources they might know personally when they’re covering a story; they always behave professionally and dispassionately when on assignment.

A terrorist attack on a government building that results in a fatality clearly falls into the category of an event that requires maximum professional decorum. The young reporter, a fellow named Vandon Gene, needs to brush up on his professional manner before he’s ever assigned to cover a news story.

Anderson Cooper has taught the young man a valuable lesson.

International news, medical news, national news

Hysteria czar? Why not?

Todd Roberson’s blog for the Dallas Morning News is spot on.

The United States doesn’t need an Ebola czar as much as it needs a “Hysteria czar.”

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/10/we-need-a-hysteria-czar-not-an-ebola-czar.html/

The worst fomenters of the hysteria gripping some Americans appear to be the cable news networks. Roberson singles out CNN, with its endless “Breaking News” alerts and its ominous-sounding music.

He writes about images of men walking around in hazmat suits, helicopters flying over Dallas-area housing complexes and a Nigerian student being denied admission to Navarro College because the school no longer accepts applications from students who come from countries with confirmed cases of Ebola.

I don’t think I’m going to say much more about this hysteria nonsense. I’m spent. No one at CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC or the broadcast networks are paying attention. I feel as though I’m talking to myself.

Ebola is not a “crisis” in the U.S. of A. We’ve had precisely one death of someone who came into this country from a country infected with the deadly disease.

I’m with Roberson. President Obama needs to appoint a Hysteria czar.

International news, medical news, national news, State news

Ebola patient dies; now, let's stay calm

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Thomas Eric Duncan has died of Ebola.

He came to Dallas from Liberia carrying the virus that causes the disease. He checked into a hospital and was given the best treatment possible anywhere in the world. Still, the disease killed him.

It’s a sad end to a man’s life.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/10/08/dallas-patient-diagnosed-ebola-dies/

Now what? Do we panic? Do we quarantine the entire hospital staff? Or those who came into this man’s room?

Not at all.

Yes, I blogged recently about the difficulty of maintaining my composure when Duncan arrived in Dallas, given that I have immediate family members living in the Metroplex. My head has cleared since then.

I hope we start listening to the medical experts who are saying the same thing — over and over, repeatedly. The only way one can catch the killer disease is to come in direct contact with someone who’s infected.

CNN’s coverage of this “crisis,” as usual, has been a bit overblown — in my humble view. The network’s reporters and anchors keep harping on the crisis aspect of the disease in West Africa — and it’s real. However, I am concerned about what it’s doing to the American psyche as it relates to this disease.

Yet the network is trotting out infectious disease experts from all over creation to tell us that a single case of Ebola in one American city should not be cause to push panic buttons, or to sound sirens, or send people into undisclosed secure locations.

If this situation is going to produce any positive outcome, it might be this: We’ve got a lot of brilliant medical researchers right here in the U.S. of A. who are quite capable of finding it. If the Ebola scare has done anything at all, I am hopeful it has scared researchers into redoubling their efforts at finding a cure.

International news, national news, political news

Did we abandon an ISIL captive?

My heart breaks for Diane Foley, whose son James was beheaded by Islamist terrorists.

Accordingly, I can understand her bitterness that the U.S. government perhaps could have done more to save her son’s life.

Perhaps.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/12/us/james-foley-mother-us-response/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Is it fair, though, so soon after this terrible tragedy to suggest the government failed to do all it could do to secure the journalist’s release?

It’s been revealed that in July the U.S. sent a Special Forces team into Syria to rescue Foley. It failed. The team arrived at where it thought Foley was being held but discovered only an empty building.

Diane Foley now alleges that national security officials threatened her with prosecution if she continued to raise money to pay a ransom for her son. Indeed, U.S. law now prohibits the government from negotiating with terrorists. It’s unclear — to me at least — just how Ms. Foley intended to pay the money if she was able to raise the amount the terrorists demanded.

Secretary of State John Kerry — who’s in Turkey seeking to build an international coalition to fight ISIL — adamantly denies any personal knowledge of a prosecution threat. Kerry told reporters: “I can tell you that I am totally unaware and would not condone anybody that I know of within the State Department making such statements.”

Quite clearly nothing can bring James Foley back. As for U.S. law prohibiting negotiating with terrorists, it needs to stay on the books.

A mother’s grief is overwhelming. A nation still mourns her son’s gruesome death. But let’s not overlay that grief with an understanding of what the government did — or couldn’t do under the law — to secure her son’s freedom.

Let’s concentrate instead on finding the murderers and administering battlefield “justice,” which is what the president and secretary of state already have vowed to do.

Uncategorized

Tired of the Ferguson story

Let’s discuss this one a little.

OK, I’ll start. I am tired of the Ferguson, Mo., story. Does anyone else out there share that thought?

We know many of the facts already. A young African-American man, Michael Brown, was shot to death by a white police officer in the St. Louis suburb. Residents protested. The protests got violent. The Ferguson police responded with a very heavy hand. The state police took over. The governor declared a curfew and called out the National Guard to keep the peace.

The cable news networks have been all over this story. They’re covering it like a blanket. 24/7, or so it seems.

I’m weary of it.

The Ferguson story, I think, gets to the heart of what sometimes ails TV journalism. Reporters get fixated on stories and then beat them into the ground.

I grew tired of the Trayvon Martin story, which had a similar context. I grew sick and tired of the Natalie Holloway story — remember her? She was the Alabama teenager who disappeared in Aruba. The networks were all over that one for seemingly forever. I got sick of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner disappearance story. CNN was the worst, reporting “breaking news” when none existed. One news anchor asked someone if it was possible if the plane flew into a black hole; he was then reminded by the guest that a black hole would swallow the entire solar system.

What am I missing in this Ferguson story?

It’s not that that my heart isn’t broken over the death of the teenager. Or that the police made a mess of their response to the protests. Or that the state police captain who’s taken charge of things hasn’t acted with nobility and courage. I get all of that. I’d like answers to questions surrounding the militarization of the police department and whether minorities are being targeted unfairly by police. How about the Ferguson political structure? It needs to change. A majority black community needs more African-Americans in positions of authority.

I just cannot watch it at length any longer. I’ve grown tired of the media saturation, just as I tired of one cable network’s obsession with the Benghazi tragedy in Libya and its coverage of the IRS non-scandal.

Is there something wrong with me?

I’m all ears.

Uncategorized

Space flight video chokes me up

I am not prone to weeping openly. That is, I don’t just start sobbing when something pushes my emotional hot button.

But I tend to swallow hard, get a little choked up at sights. Historic videos do that to me.

I cannot, for instance, watch Muhammad Ali light the 1996 Olympic torch in Atlanta without getting teary-eyed; the same thing happens when I watch video of Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes in 1973 and the announcer says he’s “running like a tremendous machine!”; ditto for watching Sen. Robert F. Kennedy say “on to Chicago and let’s win there” moments before the gunman wounded him mortally in Los Angeles.

So … I’ve been choking back tears this week watching CNN’s series on “The Sixties.” The segment this week dealt with the space race. The United States competed with the Soviet Union to be the first nation to land someone on the moon. We won that race. It was a come-from-behind victory, you’ll recall.

The segment that does it to me every time I see it is the launch of Apollo 8, the first lunar orbit mission that blasted off from Cape Canaveral on Dec. 21, 1968. The launch itself is an emotional moment for me. It reminds me of when my late mother and I would get up early to watch the countdown of those Mercury and Gemini launches. The thrill is something that has never left me.

The CNN series, though, takes you through the launch and quickly to the point where Apollo 8 commences lunar orbit with astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders aboard.

Then, on Christmas Eve 1968, Borman pulls out his Bible as he trains the TV camera on the Earth-rise over the moon’s horizon and he starts reading from the Book of Genesis … reminding us of our world that God created.

Yep, that chokes me up.

1968 was a hideous year. The Vietnam War was going badly; assassins killed Martin Luther King Jr. and RFK; our streets were erupting in chaos as Americans protested the war.

Then, to have the commander of a space mission read on Christmas Eve from the passage in the Bible that takes us back to the beginning of our very existence in the universe …

As Tom Hanks says on the CNN segment, “Who wrote that script?”

Uncategorized

VA scandal: worse than we thought

You’re probably wondering: Will the bad news ever stop piling up on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs?

I know this: I’m wondering when it’ll stop.

CNN uncovered a major scoop this week with revelations that the Phoenix, Ariz., VA clinic had covered up the number of veterans who died because of too-long wait times to obtain health care.

The number of deaths is worse than we thought!

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/23/us/phoenix-va-deaths-new-allegations/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Until the Veterans Affairs Department, the White House and the president of the United States himself get to the bottom of this mess and fix it, I am going to be leery whenever I go to the Amarillo VA hospital and clinic for my routine checkups.

The Thomas Creek Veterans Medical Center in Amarillo hasn’t been fingered specifically in any of this investigation. The problems with wait times, though, appear to run throughout the vast VA health care network.

Whistleblower Pauline DeWenter told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “deceased” notes on patients were removed from files to make the clinic’s job performance look better. As CNN.com reports: “DeWenter should know. DeWenter is the actual scheduling clerk at the Phoenix VA who said for the better part of a year she was ordered by supervisors to manage and handle the so-called ‘secret waiting list,’ where veterans’ names of those seeking medical care were often placed, sometimes left for months with no care at all.”

The government has said for decades that veterans deserve the best medical care possible. They’re not getting it. Even though I, too, am a veteran I’ve been blessed with good health, so I’ll refer to the vets in jeopardy as “they” or “them.”

Until we get this situation repaired to everyone’s satisfaction, I am going to pray for the good health of all veterans who seek medical care every one of our VA clinics. That includes the Thomas Creek VA Medical Center right here in good ol’ Amarillo, Texas.

Uncategorized

Time for lesson on 'mainstream media'

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Listen up, students. Professor John is going to lecture you today on the “mainstream media.”

You’ve heard the term, yes? It’s meant as an epithet. It’s said by those who think of the media as a four-letter word.

The term “mainstream media” came from the right wing of the political spectrum. I cannot cite the precise date the term surfaced, but it’s been around for some time.

MSM usually is a kind of code, students. It comes from those who want the media to think like the righties think. They see their own brand of MSM as pure. They’re the truth-tellers.

They hold, for example, Fox News as their model of truth-telling. Why? Well, Fox has an agenda. It is to undermine the “other side.” By that I refer to the president, Democrat Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in government. Watch most Fox broadcasts and you see how they continue to harp on the same so-called “scandals,” while other media turn their attention — usually — to other issues of the day.

What the righties don’t get, though, is that Fox has become as “mainstream” as the other media. Fox enjoys good ratings among news-and-commentary junkies across the nation. As the leading “conservative mainstream” outlet on cable TV, Fox has a good portion of that segment of the TV-viewing public to itself. Thus, its rating are good.

However, since Fox “covers” the news in a fashion that is suitable to those on the right, it is exempted from the pejorative label of “mainstream media.” Fox’s own talking heads even refer to other media as “mainstream,” sounding as if Fox is some outlier network seeking to be heard by a vast viewing audience.

The other so-called “truth-tellers” reside on the right. They comprise a variety of websites, online political newsletters, unabashed conservatives (of which I have no problem, if they ID themselves as such) and self-described political “watchdogs.” They, too, are exempted from the MSM label.

How about the other major networks: CNN and the broadcast networks — NBC, ABC and CBS? They’re the bad guys, according to those on the right. Why is that? Well, they report the news — in my view — without the flair of some other media. I’ll lump the “liberal” media outlets in that category, such as MSNBC. Don’t forget PBS, the network funded by private donations and from the government. At times, even PBS gets tarred with the MSM label. How silly.

Print journalism also gets lumped into the MSM camp. Namely it’s the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two big daddies of print journalism. Throw in the Los Angeles Times and a smattering of other major metros across the nation and you’ll see them criticized because they don’t cover the news with enough ferocity to suit those on the right. My own view is that they’re doing their job, which is to report the news … period.

However, these media outlets continue to be seen by those on the right as coddling left-wing politicians. Those critics miss a fundamental point here. It is that human beings rarely recognize their own “bias.” They see it in others, but not in themselves. If a news medium does not report on issues with one’s own slant, then they’re “biased.”

With that, students, our lesson ends.

If you’re going to criticize the “mainstream media,” take care to include your own favorite news organization in that category. Chances are they’re as “mainstream” as the media you are trying to criticize.

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That slope is slippery, Mr. President

The Vietnam Generation remembers a time when U.S. military assistance overseas went from “advisory” to engaging in bloody combat. It didn’t take terribly long for our role to change in Vietnam.

It is that memory that’s been stirred in recent days as President Obama has announced the return of U.S. advisers to Iraq to aid the Iraqi military in its fight against Sunni insurgents seeking to take back the government Americans overthrew when it went to war there in March 2003.

http://time.com/2901449/obama-iraq-isis-troops/

The president has declared categorically that the United States will not send combat troops back into Iraq. I and no doubt million of other Americans will hold him to his word on that.

I just watched an interesting segment from CNN’s series “The Sixties” that dealt with the Vietnam War. President Kennedy was killed in November 1963 and by then our advisory role in ‘Nam had grown to several thousand troops. President Johnson fairly quickly granted military requests for more troops, ratcheting up our involvement to a level where Americans were shouldering the bulk of the combat operations against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army.

By the time I arrived at Marble Mountain, just south of Da Nang, South Vietnam, in March 1969, American troops strength was at its absolute peak: 543,000 of us were deployed there. But soon the drawdown began as President Nixon implemented his “Vietnamization” program of turning the combat responsibility over to those who had the most skin in the game.

Surely, the wise men and women at the White House and perhaps even at the Pentagon will remind the current president — who was not quite 8 years old when I arrived in ‘Nam way back when — of the folly of resuming a ground combat role in Iraq.

Listen to them, Mr. President. Please.