Tag Archives: coronavirus

national news

Trump continues to seethe at Mitt

Donald Trump asked members of the U.S. Senate to join a task force to help craft a plan to restart the nation’s economy that has been shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.

He asked almost the entire Republican caucus in the Senate to join. Trump left one GOP senator off the list: Mitt Romney of Utah.

Gosh, why is that? Oh yeah! Romney was the lone GOP senator to vote to convict Trump in the impeachment trial; he voted “yes” on the abuse of power article brought to the Senate by the House of Representatives. He made history with that vote, becoming the first senator to vote to convict a president of his own party.

Trump is steamed. It’s not that he and Romney were longtime pals. Mitt spoke in 2016 about how he believes Trump is a “phony” and a “fraud.” He didn’t want him to be the party’s presidential nominee.

Romney has been periodically critical of Trump over the past three years. The Senate trial vote was the last straw.

Trump’s congressional team comprises a lot of smart folks from both parties. Mitt Romney could have added considerable expertise and perspective to the discussion. Donald Trump, though, won’t sweep aside a grudge … even when the nation’s economic health hangs in the balance.

State news

Classrooms remain empty for the rest of the school year

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MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

BLOGGER’S NOTE: This post has been corrected. Your blogger regrets the error of the original post.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made what might be among the most predictable decisions yet in this coronavirus pandemic fight.

He has closed Texas’s public schools for the remainder of the academic year. The state’s 5.4 million students and their teachers and school staffers are still at work. They are studying at home. Teachers are sending study materials to the students’ homes; the students are turning in their work. However, the school buildings themselves remain dark.

A relaxation of other restrictions appears to be coming. Abbott announced the formation of a task force that will craft a list of recommendations to be presented in fairly short order on how the state should proceed with lifting certain restrictions.

The school recommendation was pretty much a fait accompli. Abbott had set a May 4 target date for classes to reopen with students and teachers, but that date became unrealistic because the state was unable to curb the infection rate sufficiently to allow the reopening of schools.

Now comes the harder part. The “strike force” that Abbott announced will decide on a phased-in approach to restarting the Texas economy. Abbott already has announced some loosening of restrictions at hospitals, certain retail businesses and — this is my favorite item — reopening of state parks; my wife and I are itching to awaken our fifth wheel from its extended winter hibernation and take it to a state park for a few days.

Abbott pledges that his actions will be guided by “data and doctors.” That’s a welcome pledge from the governor. Proceed, Gov. Abbott … but with maximum caution.

I, too, am anxious to return to some semblance of what we used to think of as normal. However, the stakes are too great to mess this up by proceeding too hastily.

medical news, national news

Will POTUS seek to take credit for states’ pandemic-reduction success?

Donald John Trump’s well-known penchant for clumsy incoherence is likely to present itself when more of our states report an actual decline in the hospitalization caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has delivered some good news on that front. My concern, as always, is how center on how Donald Trump might seek to take credit where he doesn’t deserve it.

The national response, such as it has developed, has been pitiful and pathetic. Trump claimed to have “total authority” over every decision made at the state level; then he backed off that statement, releasing a blueprint for guidelines to relax certain restrictions that governors could follow if they wish.

He has downplayed the impact of the pandemic, then declared he knew it was a pandemic before anyone else knew it. Trump has accused hospitals of hoarding masks and ventilators. He has scolded governors, calling one of them a “snake.” Trump has accused Democrats of playing politics. He has blasted the media for reporting “fake news.”

Donald Trump has contradicted analyses given by his top medical experts.

Meanwhile, governors have been left to employ their own devices to battle the pandemic. The epicenter of the outbreak in this country, which started in Washington but moved across the nation to New York, has caused untold heartache and misery.

Now we’re beginning to see more than a glimmer of hope that social distancing and other measures enacted by governors are starting to pay dividends, as Andrew Cuomo has suggested.

I just don’t want Donald Trump to get in the way of this message. I do not want to hear this Bloviator/Braggart in Chief take credit he doesn’t deserve. I want him to keep his yapper shut.

I know I am asking for too much. I just have to get it off my chest.

media news, medical news

Pandemic coverage = failed prevention policy

Something occurred to me this week when I began reading the Dallas Morning News that my carrier tossed onto my driveway.

The newspaper’s front page story count was devoted totally to the coronavirus pandemic. Then I looked at some of the inside pages. Multiple pages contained full coverage of the pandemic. The editorial page also had many letters to the editor and opinion columns devoted to the pandemic.

Then the light bulb flashed on: When have we ever witnessed such wall-to-wall, 24/7, nonstop, relentless coverage of a single issue? I guess the last issue that did that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001. That’s how big this pandemic has become.

Why mention this? Well, I also remember earlier this year when Donald Trump was downplaying the onset of the virus that he was highly critical of previous administrations’ efforts at handling earlier health crises. He mentioned the Ebola virus and the H1N1 outbreaks that dogged the Obama administration. He exerted a bit of effort to tell us that in his view President Obama did a lousy job of corralling those crises.

OK, but … did those crises dominate the media coverage — not to mention the top of everyone’s awareness — the way this pandemic has done? No. They didn’t.

What does that tell me? It tells me that those crises either weren’t as widespread as the coronavirus pandemic has become and that the Obama administration did a good job of stemming their impact on the population.

It also symbolizes and illustrates one of the fundamental points that Trump critics — such as yours truly — have made all along, which is that Donald Trump has fumbled bigly in organizing his administration’s response to the crisis.

I have to circle back to something Dr. Anthony Fauci said, which was that had there been a concerted early effort to “mitigate” the effects of the disease that we wouldn’t be in the pickle we’re in at this moment.

So, here we are … with a disease overwhelming the media’s daily coverage of the news of the day. That, I submit, is a consequence of an inept governmental response.

economic news

‘Total authority’ takes a back seat to reality

Donald Trump’s claim to possess “total authority” to tell governors what to do in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic has taken a back seat to obvious reality.

I want to believe reason set in, that the president of the United States has looked — finally! — at the U.S. Constitution to see what it says about such authority.

But I cannot believe such a thing. What likely happened is that someone told Trump that his incoherent blathering was doing far more harm than good. I’ll go with that … or something like that.

The president is announcing “guidelines” that governors and local officials can exercise in deciding whether to relax restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 virus.

Of course his emphasis will be on the economic impact on the virus. Yes, he is giving some lip service to the suffering that has occurred among many thousands of Americans. Rest assured, Trump’s major concern continues to be — in my view — whether the economic collapse will harm his re-election chances this November.

All that said, the total authority that Donald Trump once proclaimed for himself has given way to a more reasonable approach that hands the vast bulk of that authority back to the states and those who govern them.

medical news, science news

Politicians should cease setting back-to-normal schedules

The feeble efforts by human beings to predict when they’ll be able to declare victory in a fight against a deadly virus make me want to … pull my hair out by the roots.

One such human being happens to be the president of the United States, who keeps insisting he has a preferred date in mind when he can start relaxing guidelines brought to bear by the coronavirus pandemic.

How many times must we tell Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump what should be patently obvious? Politicians cannot dictate to a deadly virus when it should stop sickening and killing human beings! We need science to determine when that will occur. We need human beings with deep scientific backgrounds and experience battling infectious disease to take the lead on this endeavor.

Donald Trump wants to establish some “flexible guidelines” that would dictate whether or to lift some of the stay at home directives that governors have issued. He keeps saying he wants a May 1 deadline to reopen the economy; then he talks about some states loosening restrictions even sooner than that!

C’mon! Let’s quit this game-playing!

We need science-based facts. We need to stop trying to outmaneuver a virus. Here is one more obvious fact that still needs to be brought up once more: A killer virus is no respecter of human deadlines, human wishes and human goals.

economic news

Sure thing, Mr. POTUS; keep saying you didn’t insist on the name issue

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The nation’s Liar in Chief revealed his penchant for prevarication once again this week; it occurred at his Wednesday “briefing” at the White House over the coronavirus pandemic.

A reporter asked him about whether his name should appear on the stimulus checks that are coming to millions of Americans.

Donald Trump said oh, no. He had nothing to do with putting his name on those checks. That he had no input on the matter. That was someone else’s call. Some anonymous staffer agreed finally to put “Donald J. Trump” on the memo line on the checks that are coming to us.

I believe that, right? Wrong! The liar who poses as president of the United States cannot tell the truth even if someone were to point a gun at him while he stands on Fifth Avenue. You know what I’m talkin’ about?

Our stimulus payment appears to be coming to us via the Postal Service that Trump might allow to go bankrupt later this year. I learned that by looking at the irs.gov website. It says we’re eligible for payment, but that the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t have sufficient information for us to qualify for direct deposit into our checking account. Whatever.

If it comes to us via snail mail, I am left with a decision to make: Do we deposit the check immediately or do we gaze fondly for days at the Idiot in Chief’s name engraved in the memo line? Well, you know how I feel about him and the notion that he would insist on putting his name on a document in an unprecedented display of ego.

And yet, Donald Trump insists he had nothing to do with putting his name on the check?

Got it. I will wait for the sun to rise in the west tomorrow morning.

medical news, national news

Pelosi puts it out there: Trump shows weakness

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is giving Donald Trump a taste of what he has dished out to her, meaning that she has declared that the president is exhibiting signs of weakness and not strength while floundering in his response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Pelosi has delivered a blistering critique of Trump in a letter to her Democratic House colleagues. She says Americans should ignore Trump and listen exclusively to the learned scientists and physicians who have the knowledge and expertise to explain the pandemic to a worried public.

Pelosi wrote: The truth is, from this moment on, Americans must ignore lies and start to listen to scientists and other respected professionals in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

I will quibble with one point: The time to ignore the “lies” began long before “this moment.” Still, the speaker is spot on in her assessment of Trump’s inability or unwillingness to lead a nation in distress.

She said that Trump continues to “obfuscate” and lies openly when he says the United States is testing more than any other nation on Earth for the COVID-19 virus; the truth is that we’re testing only a tiny fraction of Americans.

Trump would have us believe the response has gone swimmingly. The reality is that our hospital workers are drowning under the weight of the pressure they are feeling, as are ambulance crews, police officers, firefighters, nursing home employees, grocery store clerks, truck drivers …  you name it. Yet they’re all answering the call with true heroism.

Trump has dished out a boatload of insults at Pelosi stemming from the House impeachment effort earlier this year. The speaker is now giving some of it back.

I believe the speaker when she says she prays for Trump. I will join her in praying for the president and I’ll save a healthy dose of good will and prayer for the speaker as well.

medical news

Why isn’t there more bipartisan outrage and fear?

I usually am not inclined to ascribe partisan motives to varying responses to monumental tragedies, such as what we’re experiencing at this moment with the coronavirus pandemic.

But then there is this unmistakable trend we keep witnessing: Republican governors appear to be less inclined to invoke statewide measures to cope with the pandemic than their Democratic colleagues; a GOP congressman, Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, has said that people dying would be preferable to allowing the U.S. economy to tank from the pandemic; Texas GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick recently said old folks should sacrifice their lives if it means the economy would survive this crisis.

GOP-leaning talking heads on conservative media keep suggesting the fear is the product of the “mainstream media” overhyping the danger brought by the COVID-19 virus. Donald Trump reserves his criticism of governors to the Democrats among them; he remains silent on his fellow Republicans.

Is there a trend here? Well, it looks like it to me.

The nation’s top Republicans spent a good deal of time and effort when the pandemic first exploded downplaying its severity. His fellow Republicans appear to be following his lead. Only by mid-March did Donald Trump finally acknowledge the onset of a grim outcome caused by the pandemic.

Democratic state governors, meanwhile, are teaming up. The governors of three West Coast states — California, Oregon and Washington — have formed a coalition among them to coordinate their responses to the pandemic. The same thing is occurring in the Northeast, with New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island governors — all Democrats — forming a similar partnership; to be fair, a GOP governor in Massachusetts has joined them … so it’s not all bleak if you’re a Republican officeholder.

What’s going on here. Has the GOP machinery become clogged up by Donald Trump’s ignorance, fecklessness and imbecilic feuds with the media and Democrats?

This is way bigger than partisan differences, folks. How about everyone pulling together? As near as I can tell, Democrats are on the right side of this fight by taking a more proactive approach to fighting this “invisible enemy.” Republican governors need to get into the game … right now!

national news

Gov. Cuomo says he won’t ‘engage’ with Trump, but then again …

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

— 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

I listened this morning to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declare that he has no intention to of getting into a political battle with Donald John Trump over how to quell the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

Good call, governor. I applaud the Democrat’s intent to take the high road, to concentrate on the health of his constituents, who have suffered mightily under the assault by the COVID-19 virus.

However, I have trouble squaring Gov. Cuomo’s high-minded rhetoric with what he said earlier, which is that if Trump tries to exert presidential authority over the nation’s governors that we might have a “constitutional crisis on our hands.”

Cuomo, who admits to jousting with Trump when he’s felt it necessary — along with endorsing him when he earns that, too — is trying to speak nobly. I fear that Trump’s impulses will drive him to don the brass knuckles and fight the president for all he’s worth.

Trump continues his assault on the nation’s governors — the Democratic governors, I should add — over what he alleges is their delays and foot-dragging in the wake of the health crisis. He failed to respond proactively at the front end of the crisis, saying that governors held the authority to act. Now that we might be approaching the back end of the crisis, he wants to exert authority he doesn’t possess to put the nation back to work.

Cuomo is concerned that Trump is more concerned about his re-election prospects than he is in the health and well-being of New Yorkers and other Americans.

Given that Trump has no real constitutional power or authority to act, we are presented with a puzzling question: What precisely can Trump do to ignite the constitutional crisis that governors such as Andrew Cuomo say would result? Cuomo said governors could resist a federal edict to reopen the government and then we would have a constitutional likes of which “we haven’t seen in decades.”

OK. I applaud Gov. Cuomo’s stated intent to refuse to “engage” Trump in an open dispute. However, the absence of impulse control within Donald Trump — along with his ignorance — might force the nation’s governors to fight back … with all due vigor.