Tag Archives: coronavirus

media news, Uncategorized

Trump resumes feud with media

Well, that was a nice break while it lasted.

Donald Trump took time the other day to offer a good word about the media and their work in covering the coronavirus pandemic. It gave some of us a glimmer of hope that the president was finally beginning to act the part he portrays.

Silly us. He resumed his feud today, blasting the “fake news” the media purportedly conveys. He blasted The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, all of which are great newspapers full of dedicated journalists who do their job to the best of their considerable ability.

None of that matters to this president, who passes judgment on media outlets based on whether they report “positive” news about his administration.

Yep, the feud is back on.

Disgusting.

national news

‘Wartime president’? Are you serious, Mr. POTUS?

Donald John Trump clearly is fixated with macho-sounding language, even as he fails repeatedly to act like the person he portrays himself as being.

He said today at a White House briefing that he considers himself a “wartime president” in light of the struggle the nation is fighting against the coronavirus pandemic.

OK, so he wants to wear the mantle once worn by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, LBJ and George W. Bush, all of whom presided over a nation that was — and is — engaged in actual wars. Trump now is seeking to elevate the struggle against the coronavirus to what we have faced over many decades.

However, Donald Trump has yet to demonstrate the kind and quality of leadership that previous presidents have sought to exhibit. The federal government is still struggling to clear its throat and speak with a single, united, coherent voice on the fight against the pandemic.

In the meantime, Trump continues to fire salvos at the press, whose job is to chronicle events in real time. Does a “wartime president” actually have the time to concoct idiotic attack lines against the media, leveling ridiculous allegations that the media are deliberately conspiring to undermine him?

Hey, I totally get why Trump wants to be called a “wartime president” in an election year. He likely wants to parlay that label into a campaign mantra, seeking to encourage voters to back him because, well, we’re in the “middle of a war. Why do we want to change commanders in chief when we’re at war?”

It’s a cynical and utterly preposterous notion.

economic news, medical news

Taking a measure of comfort from PSAs

Time for an admission: This coronavirus crisis/pandemic has me seriously out of sorts.

I don’t like facing the prospect of such dramatic life changes. The idea that the United States of America might shut down completely, to be honest, is damn frightening. So are the warnings from health and science experts that the “worst is yet to come” and that we could face many millions of stricken Americans, and a vast number of fatalities.

The rush on basic groceries has emptied our neighborhood supermarket here in Princeton, Texas. We went to the store this morning looking to buy a few items. We aren’t hoarders. Row after row of empty shelves greeted us.

I don’t like what I am seeing and what I am feeling.

Now for the good news.

I am drawing a measure of comfort from some of the public service announcements I am seeing on TV. CBS-TV, for one, is broadcasting a PSA showing stars from several of its prime-time programming that reminds us that “we’re in this together.”

No one is alone. No one should feel abandoned. No one should give up hope, that we’ll get through this mess.

By all means I want the end to arrive sooner rather than later. I don’t know if the PSAs are going to snap me out of my funk in the immediate term. Maybe eventually I will snap out of it once I get used to the many changes in our lives that this pandemic is forcing on all of us.

I guess the trick is to look at the longer term rather than worry about what is happening to us in the moment.

I’ll admit it’s hard to do. However, I will cling to the good word and to the encouragement that we’re all in this together.

national news

Nix the ‘Chinese virus’ talk, Mr. POTUS

The Bigot in Chief just can’t resist tripping all over himself.

The Dallas Morning News noted correctly in an editorial today that Donald J. Trump finally began to sound like a leader when dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

Then he stumbled again. He took to Twitter to refer to the pandemic as the “Chinese virus.” Yep. It’s China’s “fault.” Or so the president would have us believe with his idiotic Twitter rant.

The Morning News took note of how President Bush managed to soothe much of the nation’s grief after 9/11. He stood with Muslim-Americans and said they are as proud of the nation “as I am.” He said categorically that we are a nation of people of all faiths who share the same sense of common decency and kindness.

Trump just cannot get that notion through his thick skull. Oh, no. Instead he chooses to inflame mistrust toward Asian-Americans with that ridiculous “Chinese virus” reference.

As the Morning News commented: As many public health experts across the country have taken pains to explain, viruses don’t have nationalities, and they don’t discriminate when it comes to who can spread disease or become infected. Labeling coronavirus as a “Chinese” virus only contributes to the confusion and divisiveness in an uncertain time.

The president needs to step up and stop this moronic chiding of Asian-Americans who are in this fight along with the entire country.

medical news

Trump base’s appetite for lies is infinite

I have reached an inescapable and tragic conclusion about the base of fanatic support that Donald John Trump continues to rely on as he seeks re-election to the presidency.

The Trump base has an infinite, bottomless appetite for the lies that flow out of his pie hole. One of his latest lies simply takes the proverbial cake.

Trump said he called the coronavirus pandemic what it is before the rest of the world knew it was a pandemic. To whom in the name of gullibility does this clown think he’s talking?

We all heard the president say, in no particular order:

  • That the coronavirus is a “Democrat hoax.”
  • That the victims stood at five and that it soon would be zero.
  •  That the outbreak would subside once warm weather arrives.
  •  That doctors are amazed at the knowledge of medical issues he demonstrates.
  •  That anyone who wants to be tested can be tested.

I know I’ve missed a few, but you get the point.

The Liar in Chief cannot tell the truth. Now he says — with apparently not a single ounce of self-awareness — that he knew all along that the pandemic was a serious matter.

Does this clown think he’s talking to a nation full of rubes who are as ignorant as he is? OK, some of us, indeed, are rubes. You know to whom I refer. The rest of us know better.

This guy is flat-out dangerous, man!

national news

National crisis needs to produce national sacrifice

National crises have this way of producing national unity and a call for national sacrifice to deal forthrightly with the challenges that arrive at our doorstep.

It is being argued that tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Americans might lose their jobs as the coronavirus pandemic strikes at us.

The nation has a shortage of testing equipment, of surgical masks, hospital beds, medicine, various household supplies essential to people’s daily lives.

Cities, counties and states are doing what they can to wage war against what Donald Trump has called “an invisible enemy.”

There must be a national response. One is developing, or so it seems, but it is being cobbled together on a piecemeal approach. The president went from dismissing the pandemic as a short-term matter to something vastly different.

National sacrifice? How does that manifest itself?

They’re talking about paying out sums of money to every American household. How do we afford that when our budget has acquired a debt of $22 trillion and when the annual federal budget deficit has zoomed past the trillion-dollar mark?

Here’s a thought: an increase in taxes.

If the nation is going to respond completely to battle this pandemic, then it must be able to pay for it. No one wants to pay more in taxes, but given the alternatives facing us at this moment, there might not be any way for our federal government — for which we already are footing the bill — to avoid leveling a greater tax burden on us all.

Someone has to pay for all that we need. If not us … then who?

local news, medical news, science news

The ‘new normal’ might become just plain ‘normal’

I now want to share a bit of good news, given that we’ve been bombarded with a torrent of bad news of late.

The good news as I see it is that the “new normal” we are likely experiencing could become simply “normal” once the crisis subsides and ultimately drifts into history.

And it will. I am confident that the coronavirus pandemic will dissipate. It will take some time, which brings me to my point.

Which is that we are going to spend a lot of time and energy changing the way we do things.

There might be so much hand-washing, using sanitized wipes, extra precaution taken with “social distancing” that it will become second-nature even after we no longer need to do all these things.

My wife and I are wiping down fuel pumps, shopping carts, door handles … you name it, we’re wiping it down. “You never know who touches these things,” my wife says with her considerable wisdom. Indeed, we’re taking precautions we didn’t use to take.

We were walking through the ‘hood the other morning when we met a gentleman who works as a construction foreman on the houses being built in our Princeton, Texas, subdivision. He has an Oregon Ducks decal on the rear window of his pickup. I asked him, “Are you a Ducks fan?” He said he is. He then told us he grew up in Portland, attended Sunset High School, Portland State University — and attended the Pac-12 football championship game in the Bay Area this past season when the Ducks “destroyed Utah.” We told him we moved to Texas from Oregon in 1984. He’s a home boy!

I started to shake his hand, then pulled my hand back. “Hey, no sweat,” he said. “I get it.”

Handshakes with strangers well might become a thing of the past, too.

Yep, the new normal is upon us. It’ll take time to get used to this new way of living. I suspect if the crisis lasts long enough, what’s new will become, well, just plain “normal.”

local news, medical news

Confused over logic of all these closings

It seems almost counterintuitive.

Public schools are delaying the resumption of classes for weeks. Here in Princeton, Texas, the public school system will be closed to students, teachers and staff until May 4. It might last even longer. The end of the academic year comes normally at the end of May.

Why is it counterintuitive? The closures are coming as the world deals with the pandemic caused by the coronavirus outbreak. There’s a massive increase in “community spread” of the potentially deadly disease, meaning that individuals can get exposed merely by being in the presence of those who carry the virus. How does sending children, teachers and staffers home when they can expose themselves to the disease outside of a classroom?

I support what our public institutions are doing to mitigate the disease spread. Our sons are grown men; one of them is the father of a little girl who’s also staying home rather than going to school. She isn’t playing with her friends during this emergency situation; her parents are keeping their watchful eyes on her at all times. This is just one family. Are all of them as responsible? Obviously … no!

There will be more of this to occur.

As a retired American, I am trying to wrap my arms around this story as it develops. It is mind-boggling in the extreme. In all my years walking this good Earth, I don’t recall a crisis that measures up to this still-developing story. We’ve had crises with swine flu, with Ebola, various other influenza outbreaks, measles. We once had a polio crisis in this country. Have we faced the threat of a total shutdown? Have we faced quite the economic impact that this crisis is delivering?

It’s a scary time. Keep an eye on the children and those who might be at risk. In the meantime, I am seeking to make sense of it.

economic news

Thousand bucks to Americans? Thank you, Andrew Yang!

I truly cannot believe what I have been hearing today, that Donald Trump appears to be channeling a failed Democratic presidential candidate.

Businessman Andrew Yang campaigned for president promising to send all Americans a monthly stipend of $1,000; Republicans and even some Democrats blasted the idea as foolish. Yang ended his presidential campaign a few weeks ago.

Now comes the president of the United States pledging to send Americans a $1,000 payment to help deal with the economic disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic that has thrown many citizens out of work.

My head is spinning!

The handout will cost about $1 trillion. Where does the president get the money? Well, I guess the Treasury Department just prints it.

I do not understand where this is coming from.

The first order of the federal government’s business is to protect us from disease and other threats. Donald Trump was a bit slow to come around, but he is starting to sound like someone who finally gets it. I hope he stays the course on that matter.

Hospitals are understaffed and underequipped, though, in advance of what most experts say will be a serious surge in coronavirus illness. What are the feds doing in that regard? How are they going to assist state and local governments shore up the health care provisions that will be required to deal with that surge?

A thousand bucks in our pockets won’t do the job.

Don’t get me wrong. Americans should welcome the dough … but the long game still needs definition.

medical news

Trump and his team are getting it … finally!

I want to hope that Donald J. Trump has turned the corner on this coronavirus matter, that he’s now taking it as seriously as it deserves to be taken.

I also want to believe the president when he says we’re in a war with an invisible enemy, a war he vows to “win.”

However, the turnabout has been so dramatic, so profound that I cannot stop listening to the nonsense he spouted not so long ago while the rest of the world was becoming rattled by the onset of the pandemic.

He went in just a matter of two weeks from proclaiming the pandemic to be a “Democrat hoax” to declaring war on this “enemy.”

How, too, can we forget what we have learned about how he dismantled the pandemic office set up during the Obama administration as part of the National Security Council? Trump took the office down, reportedly only because President Obama thought it was worthwhile.

Now we’re paying the price for such reckless petulance? Is that the deal? Consider what has been reported about how the Obama team sought to counsel the Trump team during the transition from one administration to another.

The Obama folks sought to brief the Trump folks about the potential dangers of pandemics, according to Business Insider. The Trump team, though, were disinterested in what they were hearing. BI reports that the new commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, actually dozed off more than once during the briefings he and others were getting.

As BI reported: “There were people who were there who said, ‘This is really stupid and why do we need to be here,'” the senior Obama administration told Politico.

OK, so it appears now that the Trump administration is starting — finally! — to understand the scope of the crisis that has erupted. I will remain hopeful that’s the case.

Why, though, did we have to endure the idiocy that came from our nation’s top government echelon?