Monthly Archives: April 2020

medical news

Pence flouts Mayo mask policy

Oh, man. I had hoped Mike Pence would be above flouting a policy enacted by a major medical center. Silly me. The vice president is more like the president than I had thought.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has enacted a policy that declares everyone in the place wears a mask. Pence visited the clinic today and was the only individual photographed who wasn’t wearing a mask to protect him against the coronavirus.

Uh, Mr. Vice President … what in the name of disease prevention is wrong with you? Mayo officials even said they would provide Pence with a mask.

Pence knew of the policy. He chose to parade around the joint without a mask. There he was, following the lead of Donald Trump, who declared that mask-wearing was a suggestion, but that he would forgo wearing a mask while working in the White House.

That’s leadership? That’s how you demonstrate to the nation that you are willing to do what health officials are asking the rest of us to do? Of course not!

It is an act of stupidity.

Truthfully, I thought Vice President Pence was smarter than that.

economic news

What’s with this order to keep meat packers operating?

I admit readily that I don’t understand a lot of things in life.

One of them deals with an executive order that Donald Trump plans to issue that keeps meat packing plants running while the nation is still fighting the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

Meat packers report their employees are falling ill to the killer virus; some of them have died. Trump wants to issue an order that protects meat packers from legal liability in case workers sue them for exposing employees to the COVID-19 virus.

If I read that correctly, Trump is more interested in protecting the companies than in protecting the employees who work for them … and who put themselves at risk of possible exposure to a virus that could kill them.

Trump will invoke the Defense Production Act, declaring the food supply chain as essential to our national security. Oh, but wait! He only recently said the food supply chain was in no jeopardy. Others are saying something quite different. The head of Tyson Foods says the “supply chain is breaking.”

I get back to my essential point, which is that I don’t understand how a president of the United States can order a privately run industry to operate and put employees in potentially mortal danger.

We moved to the Metroplex a couple of years ago after living in the heart of the cattle-feeding industry. We called the Texas Panhandle home for nearly 23 years. That region feeds roughly 20 percent of all the beef consumed in this country. A shutdown of the Tyson packing plant in Amarillo would do serious harm to the region’s economy, not to mention the nation’s meat supply. I totally get it.

But what about the men and women who work in that plant, many of whom are immigrants who came here to seek a better life? What kind of “better life” can they enjoy if they become sickened by COVID-19? Or if, heaven forbid, the disease kills them?

I am trying to understand it. I cannot get there.

national news

Time to treat this accusation with the seriousness it deserves

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

OK, ladies and gentlemen, fair is fair and my instinct for fairness compels me to say something painful.

I admire former Vice President Joe Biden. I want him to win the next presidential election. I believe he should win. I believe his character, his knowledge and his qualifications far exceed those of the incumbent, Donald Trump.

However, he has a storm cloud brewing high overhead. We need to get a resolution to the disturbance that is bound to erupt.

Tara Reade has accused Biden of sexual assault. I don’t necessarily believe that he assaulted her in 1993 as she has alleged. She only recently came forward. However, what I believe is not at issue here. The issue rests on whether the media are covering this story with the same zeal that they did with the allegations leveled in 2018 by Christine Ford against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

They are not. They should get to the bottom of what has been alleged. It needs to be resolved, if that is possible, immediately.

Joe Biden himself declared that a woman who levels an accusation of the nature that Ford did against Kavanaugh needs to be taken seriously. Has that standard changed now that Tara Reade has emerged as an accuser of a highly placed politician who well might become the next president of the United States? Of course it hasn’t!

Biden has denied the accusation categorically. So did Kavanaugh while he was being scrutinized during his Senate confirmation hearing. Ford’s allegation caused me some proverbial heartburn when she came forth. So is Tara Reade’s accusation.

We need a full vetting of what she has alleged. We need it settled. Then we need to get to the task of tossing Donald Trump out of office.

national news

Nation is paying the price for Trump’s hunches

Here we are.

We hear now that Donald J. Trump heard multiple times early this year about the threat posed by the coronavirus. It came to him via the presidential daily briefings he received from the National Security Council.

Only one problem … and it’s a doozy: Trump didn’t read the reports. He blew ’em off. He doesn’t bother with such detail. Trump prefers to rely on his own alleged knowledge of matters about which he knows nothing.

The NSC kept at it. The intelligence network reminded him of what the PDB contained. He didn’t care to hear it.

OK. Now comes this from The Donald. He said the PDB informed him that the coronavirus problem would blow over. It wasn’t worth his time. It was nothing that should concern us. No sweat. It’ll disappear.

So, it falls along this line. Do you believe what medical and national security experts were telling us in February? Or do you now believe that the Liar in Chief was told that the coronavirus didn’t rise to the level of a potential pandemic when the PDB came to his attention?

Let’s see. I think I’ll go with the medical and national security team.

What is the consequence? It’s obvious. The United States is paying a terrible price for Donald Trump’s unwillingness to listen to experts, to actually read and study detailed reports — and to act on all of it!

Oh, no. Not this guy! He relies on his “best mind” that is full of expertise that does not exist.

This individual is not making America great again. He has put this already-great nation in dire peril.

media news

Good news offers strength

I am drawing a good deal of strength by much of what I am reading these days, yes, even in this troubling and perilous time.

We’re holed up in our house. We go out only to do essential duties. We watch a lot of TV; I am on the computer a great deal; I am reading lots of material related to the coronavirus pandemic.

I read the bad stuff. I am disheartened and dismayed by the misery and the heartache out there. It normally would send me into an emotional tailspin.

However, the media that Donald Trump loves to demonize, also is giving me reason to keep the faith. They are reporting about the heroism, the unsolicited good deeds being done, the demonstrations of caring and love, the joy of children who get to play games with their parents and their siblings.

I subscribe to three newspapers: the Dallas Morning News, the Princeton Herald and the Farmersville Times. Each of them in every issue I see offers positive news about heroism and outreach. Cable news channels do the same thing. They tell us of the amazing fortitude being exhibited by pent-up Americans who (a) wish for all they’re worth for a return to “normal life” and (b) understand that they must adhere to the rules being laid down by their government.

Broadcast TV is full of public service announcements repeating the mantra: We’re in this together. Our Dallas/Fort Worth network stations give us reason to smile at the news they deliver about the deeds being done to help others.

The cynics in public life — the politicians who have determined that the media are the “enemy of the people” — simply aren’t paying attention to what the media are seeking to do. The media are allowing me to crease my face with a smile.

They are strengthening me for the ongoing battle against a killer.

I want to thank them for that.

national news

‘Briefings’ aren’t worth our time

(Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Donald Trump must’ve been lying again when he said he wouldn’t deliver any more White House “briefings,” saying they aren’t worth his “time and effort.”

So what does the president do today? He canceled the planned session in the Rose Garden to discuss the coronavirus pandemic, then he stood before us — yet again! — to deliver another rant.

I have to say it, but it’s so patently obvious to me. The folks whose time is being wasted are those Americans who wait for something constructive, informative and useful to come from the president of the United States.

So, with that I will conclude that it doesn’t matter one tiny bit to me whether these events are worth Donald Trump’s “time and effort.” What ought to matter most is that they aren’t worth American citizens’ time to hear what he says or the effort it takes for us to make sense of any of it.

national news

Trump worsens relations between political foes … imagine that!

Among the many things Donald Trump promised while running for president — in addition to “making America great again” and throwing out illegal immigrants — was that he would upset the political norm.

He would be an “unconventional president.” Boy howdy! He has delivered on that one! I now want to offer an example.

He has turned political adversaries who otherwise would be friends into, well, bitter enemies.

My friends have known my political leanings for a long time. They tilt leftward. I favor Democrats over Republicans at the highest levels of government; I have voted all Democrat for president in every election since 1972. I do split my ticket, though, and I have voted for many Republicans at state and local levels over that span of time.

I have many friends who have voted all Republican for president. We have remained friends. However, I must admit that our friendship has been undergoing a tremendous amount of stress during the Donald Trump Era.

I refuse to let my friendships be torn asunder by political differences. I hope they think of me in the same way.

However, I have heard countless anecdotal stories of how friendships have been ripped apart, flushed away, trampled to death by intense differences. People who hate Trump have lost friendships with those who love Trump. Donald Trump even has infused normally non-political folks with an unusual level of disgust at those who disagree with them politically.

Why has this happened? Is this by design? Is this what Donald Trump envisioned when he rode down that escalator in June 2015 to declare his presidential candidacy? A part of me thinks that Trump actually believed he would produce this bitter divide. I cannot read what passes for this kook’s mind, but my own gut tells me he has produced precisely the political climate he desired.

Trump vowed to “unify” the country. He has talked only to his base, the roughly 40-something percent that has stuck with him since he lost the actual vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016. His refusal to speak to all Americans has created what I believe is this remarkably wide — and widening — divide among American voters.

The greater distance between those who support this guy and those of us who oppose him only has deepened the anger many of us feel toward each other.

Therein, I suggest, is arguably the greatest tragedy of this individual’s tenure as president.

education news

No, Mr. POTUS, do not encourage schools to reopen, too

Oh, Mr. President. There you go again. You don’t need to entice school boards or state governors or statewide educational officials to jump the gun and reopen public schools prior to the end of the current academic year.

Texas schools are closed for the rest of the year. They’ll reopen — we hope — when the 2020-21 school year is set to begin in August.

That’s not even a sure thing, given the rate of coronavirus infection we’re still experiencing.

But there you went again today, suggesting it would be all right with you if states want to reopen their school systems.

Forgive me for being blunt, Mr. President, but you’ve got a screw loose in that noggin of yours. You’re off your rocker. You seemingly are batsh** crazy … but that’s just me speaking for myself.

Too many states have too many restrictions on the way we interact with each other. Social distancing is now the norm of the moment. How do we tell a kindergartner, or a first- or second-grader to stay at least six feet away from his or teacher or best friends?

My granddaughter is a bright first-grade student. I do not know how well, though, she would respond to directives to stay away from her two besties. I mean, the three of them are BFFs. They do everything together. Yes, she misses her pals, and they miss her. Now is not the time to let them back into the classroom together.

My hope is that we can keep the schools closed. The kids can continue to learn at home through lessons sent to them by their teachers. Our granddaughter is doing just fine under that circumstance.

Open the schools this academic year? Hah! That’s another good one, Mr. President … except nothing you say makes me laugh except out of derision. Otherwise, you make me cringe.

medical news

Another lie about coronavirus testing has come forth

2 Comments

It’s becoming a parlor game of sorts, trying to determine the biggest daily lie coming from Donald John Trump.

My candidate has to do with Trump’s statement today that we are “lapping the field” in terms of testing for the coronavirus.

Hmm. In terms of raw numbers of tests, yes. We are testing more than any other country on Earth.

However …

The per capita testing — the number of tests we give in relation to the rest of the population — is a far more dismal figure. We are not “lapping the field.” The United States remains woefully short. We have tested about 1.5 percent of our population. We have 330 million citizens. We’ve tested a tiny fraction of that total.

That is not how I would calculate the success of our nation’s testing regimen. Nor should Donald Trump foist a phony assertion on us and then boast about how we are “lapping the field.”

Donald Trump lied. Again. He’ll keep lying.

State news

Thanks, Gov. Abbott, but no thanks; I’m staying home

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says it’s time to reopen the state. The stay at home order he issued has done its job by reducing the level of infection from COVID-19.

Restaurants, malls, museums, libraries, retail outlets can reopen, he said today, but they have to limit it to 25 percent of capacity.

Governor, you may count me as one Texan who’s going to stay away. My wife and I are going to continue doing what we’ve been doing: We’ll go out only when we must purchase an essential item; we’re going to keep wearing masks; we’re going to wipe door handles, shopping carts and our hands with sanitized wipes.

I want Texas and the nation to get back to business as much as the next guy. However, I am leery of any relaxation at this moment. I keep reading about the potential for spikes in infection. I keep fearing the prospect of testing positive for the virus. I am 70 years of age; my wife is a bit younger, but she, too, is at risk. The good news is that we both enjoy good health but we want to ensure that our health status remains good.

I do endorse the notion that Abbott’s decision doesn’t require businesses to reopen, but that it gives them the permission to do so. They shouldn’t rush to fling open their doors, even to a 25-percent capacity.

With that, I just want to say “thanks, Gov. Abbott, but no thanks.” I am going to stay home and keep doing what I have been doing until we can report an even greater significant decline in the rate of infection.