Tag Archives: pandemic

medical news

WHO gets cut off

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This decision makes about as little sense as Donald Trump declaring that the coronavirus pandemic is “under control.”

Trump has terminated this nation’s relationship with the World Health Organization. Think of this for a moment.

The planet is locked in a struggle against a killer viral infection. WHO stands as a worldwide clearinghouse for valuable medical information and assistance to nations seeking help in fighting diseases just like COVID-19.

What does Trump do? He cuts off WHO. He said this week he intends to spend the estimated $450 million annually we spend on WHO on other health-related organizations. Which ones? Which of them will get the money? What will they do with it?

Trump is angry with WHO because the United Nations-sponsored agency covered up — he says — for China when the pandemic first broke. He’s angry with China … after giving China credit for its alleged “transparency” in fighting the disease. He’s always been angry with the U.N., preferring to rely on that idiotic “America first” pledge he made while running for president in 2016.

I need to point out how Trump has farmed out so much of his private business employment to non-Americans, but I digress.

Now the WHO is seeking to fight the pandemic without the financial support of the nation that (a) provides more money by far than any other nation to the agency and (b) has recorded more infections and death — also by far — than any other nation on Earth.

Does that make sense? I didn’t think so.

national news

Leadership is MIA

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Donald Trump strode to the microphone today at the White House.

The nation is reeling from the death of George Floyd, the Minneapolis resident who died after being restrained brutally by a cop. City streets have erupted in flames. Many of us are grieving over Floyd’s death. The entire world is watching.

Oh, and we also have that pandemic that is far from being brought “under control.”

So, what does Donald Trump do? He speaks about China. He talks about China’s theft of intellectual property. He speaks about how he has gotten tough on China after his immediate predecessor let China get away with taking advantage of the United States.

Did the president take a moment to speak while standing in front of his bully pulpit to call for calm? Did he offer a word of comfort to George Floyd’s family and friends? Did he vow to call any of Floyd’s loved ones, to offer a word of empathy, compassion?

Oh, no! He didn’t say a single, solitary word about the tragedy.

This is a continuation of the failure of leadership that Donald Trump exhibits. He doesn’t have an empathetic bone in that overfed body of his.

And so the nation grieves without any semblance of leadership from its head of state. Donald Trump instead concerns himself with personal political matters … even as the nation continues to struggle against the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 of its citizens.

No one said the job of president is a walk in the park. It requires much of the individual who occupies the office. The current occupant lacks at every level imaginable the skill it takes to lead a nation in distress.

He needs to be removed from office.

State news

Growing fonder of vote by mail

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I am not King of the World, but if I held that title, I would mandate that we all vote on Election Day, in person, in the privacy of a polling booth.

However, since I cannot do that, I am left to deal with the real world. Reality at this moment rests in a pandemic that threatens the health of voters who want to cast their ballots for president of the United States. They fear that voting in person would expose them to COVID-19. So they want to cast their ballots by mail.

I do, too.

Thus, I am baffled, flabbergasted and confused by the opposition to vote by mail by Texas’ top elected officials. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have formed a troika that opposes vote by mail.

Why? They contend it invites rampant voter fraud. They parrot Donald Trump. They’re all Republicans. They are launching a sickening end-around game that seeks to suppress voter turnout.

The Texas Tribune also reports — and this is rich, man! — that all three of them (four if you count Trump) have cast ballots by mail in the past. They have done so out of convenience, I reckon. The TT reports that Paxton regularly votes in person in his Collin County precinct, but has voted by mail. Same for Patrick and, yes, for Abbott.

So what’s the real problem here? Is it voter fraud as they contend? I think not!

I am not necessarily a fan of all-mail voting. You know that already. However I prefer it by a wide margin over not voting at all. I am one Texas resident who has a concern about potential exposure to a possible killer virus.

I also want Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton to stop hiding behind a phony excuse as justification for refusing to allow as many Texans as possible to cast ballots for the next president.

Rampant voter fraud does not exist. Nor will it exist if we develop a secure system of voting by mail.

local news, Sports news

No hardball for a lot of communities

Oh, I do hate exposing myself to being called a Negative Ned, but I believe I am hearing the death knell for the 2020 minor league baseball season all across the nation.

Reuters is reporting that “hundreds” of minor league baseball players have been released by their teams. They’ve been let go. No baseball for these fellows, at least not this year. The coronavirus pandemic has all but shut down minor league ball this season.

Meanwhile, the Major League Baseball gurus/moguls/tycoons are struggling to find a way to launch a dramatically shortened season by the Fourth of July. To do that, they are having to slash costs associated with running a big league franchise. Who pays for that? The folks in the minor leagues.

Now, this is where it cuts a bit close to the quick for yours truly. A team I have been following from some distance now appears to be in some peril. I refer to the Amarillo Sod Poodles, the AA franchise affiliated with the San Diego Padres.

I lived in Amarillo for 23 years. I have a lot of friends there. Many of them have become devoted fans of the Sod Poodles, who in their first season ever won the Texas League championship. They play in a brand new venue in downtown Amarillo. They draw full-house crowds on game day/night.

It appears that Season No. 2 is slipping away. This breaks my heart. It saddens me that the defending champs will have to wait a year to, um, defend their title.

I don’t want this to happen. I want my friends to be able to cheer on the Sod Poodles. Alas, it is looking — at least to me — as if it ain’t gonna happen.

Dang!

medical news

Tragic milestone: 100K dead from virus

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Now that we have passed yet another grievous milestone in the fight against COVID-19, it’s time to look briefly — no need to rehash what we know — at how we got to this terrible event.

Donald Trump declared the virus “under control” in the beginning. We had 15 cases nationally. Trump said the disease would disappear like magic.

It hasn’t. The death toll stands at 100,000 — and counting!

He told us that as president, he calls the shots. Governors should yield to his authority as head of state and commander in chief. Then he punted. He tossed it all back to the governors.

Trump has fought with Democratic governors who have insisted that health concerns should be paramount in their executive decision-making. Trump has heaped praise on Republican governors who have insisted with equal fervor that the economic collapse has brought even more misery to Americans; Trump is in their corner.

Trump has enacted no national plan. He has produced no national strategy. Trump has contradicted medical experts he assembled to participate in the coronavirus pandemic response team.

Oh, and the virus that Trump said would disappear miraculously?

It hasn’t done any such thing. It has gotten worse. It is continuing to worsen. It is killing more Americans every hour.

And still … Donald Trump boasts about what a “fantastic job” he is doing. No. He is not!

national news

It isn’t ‘political correctness,’ Mr. POTUS

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A reporter stood before Donald Trump today to pose a question; he said he had to speak loudly because he was wearing a surgical mask.

“You’re being politically correct,” Trump told the reporter, speaking in that dismissive tone he uses to discuss measures people are taking to avoid being sickened by the coronavirus.

The reporter answered that he was merely being cautious, that he doesn’t want to catch the killer virus.

And so it goes on and on with the Dipsh** in Chief, who continues to dismiss the wearing of masks as a preventative measure by Americans.

Trump won’t wear one in public. He says a mask makes him “look ridiculous.” He poked fun today at his likely election opponent, Democrat Joseph R. Biden, for wearing a mask during Memorial Day services in Delaware. Biden was asked by a CNN reporter whether wearing  mask is a sign of “strength” or “weakness.”

Joe Biden’s answer? It’s a sign of “leadership.” Bingo!

Donald Trump has failed every leadership test he has ever taken since becoming a politician.

Oh! There’s this: The disease that would in Donald Trump’s words disappear “miraculously” when we had recorded 15 cases is about to claim its 100,000th fatality.

national news

Oh, the dilemma is maddening

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I am faced at this moment with the most vexing political dilemma I have encountered since I first became eligible to vote.

That was in 1972. I had just returned from active duty in the Army. The 26th amendment to the Constitution was enacted in 1971. I got to vote! Cool!

Now it’s 48 years later and I am trying to stare down this dilemma. It goes like this:

I am torn between wanting the economy and the nation’s health to recover from the global pandemic that is going to kill thousands more Americans while also wanting to remove Donald John Trump from the office of president of the United States.

The dilemma forms because Donald Trump would find a way to take credit for the nation recovering from the pandemic when, in my view, he has done damn near nothing to bring about a welcome conclusion to the crisis.

The economy might start to rebound later this year. Or it might continue to crater. Americans might no longer be stricken with the viral infection called COVID-19, or we might continue to get sick and die at a shocking and tragic rate.

Do I want the worst to occur? Of course not! I want there to be a full return to economic vitality and I certainly want an end to the misery, the grief and the tragic loss of life we are enduring at this moment.

However, a return to economic and physical vitality is likely going to produce a blizzard of self-aggrandizing and misleading (at the very least) pronouncements from the Nimrod in Chief about how “none of this could have occurred without me as your president.”

Perhaps the strangest aspect of it all is that millions of Americans are going to guzzle the swill that this con man would deliver.

Would a happy ending produce a Donald Trump re-election? I shudder at the thought. In my humble view, this individual — through his initial dawdling and dismissiveness about the pandemic — is responsible for more of the misery than he ever will acknowledge.

He deserves to be booted out of office.

national news

Trump might demand a GOP convention change of venue?

Donald John “Bully in Chief” Trump keeps looking for ways, it seems to me, to prove how incompetent, shallow and self-serving he can be.

Consider what he is threatening to do: He is now threatening to force a change of venue for the Republican National Convention from Charlotte, N.C. to move to another location at the last minute. His reason is a stunner.

He says North Carolina’s governor, Roy Cooper — who happens to be a Democrat — needs to declare its OK for GOP conventioneers to gather in the convention arena to cheer Donald Trump’s nomination for president.

Except that Gov. Cooper isn’t ready to make that declaration. He isn’t ready to say that the convention hall will be safe to stuff thousands of people under one roof while the nation fights the coronavirus pandemic.

I will stand with the governor on this one. No surprise there, right?

Still, Gov. Cooper is seeking to protect North Carolinians and those who are venturing to his state to take part in a presidential nominating convention.

What is troubling to me is that Trump would seek to coerce a governor who — along with his colleagues of both political parties — is trying to wrestle this killer virus into submission. Trump’s overarching concern is producing images of cheering convention attendees which, of course, he could use to boost his re-election chances.

Why not conduct a “virtual” convention, which is under serious consideration by the Democratic National Committee? The DNC is hoping to stage its convention in Milwaukee, Wisc., prior to the RNC’s event. However, as has become the norm in this fight against COVID-19, Democrats appear to err more on the side of health concern than their Republican colleagues … although I am certain GOP operatives are concerned about people’s health.

They’re just equally concerned about how to ensure Donald Trump’s re-election.

And the president is seeking to throw his weight around on an issue that well could put more Americans at risk.

Unbelievable!

national news

Put partisan politics aside to fight the pandemic … please!

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We are living in perilous times in light of the pandemic that is sweeping around the globe and has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.

OK, that is no flash on the part of this blog and your friendly blogger. Still, the idea needs a bit of fleshing out.

One would have thought — or could have thought — that a pandemic on the scale of the COVID -19 crisis could unite a nation that is divided sharply along partisan lines.

Democrats and Republicans dislike and even detest each other. We need a reason to unite. I would have thought that a pandemic that kills Republicans and Democrats with equal malice would do the trick. It isn’t happening.

Who’s to blame for the continuing partisan pi**ing match? I’ll declare my view: The blame belongs to Donald John “Demagogue in Chief” Trump.

The president takes an oath that compels him to unify the nation when crisis strikes. Past presidents have risen to the task: Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor was bombed; George W. Bush after 9/11. Donald Trump and the coronavirus pandemic? He has picked fights with Democratic governors, Democratic members of Congress, the media … you name ’em, he’s fought ’em.

Trump bristles at the idea that voting by mail is an alternative to traditional balloting. Why? He dismisses the fear that traditional voting would expose Americans to the virus and concocts a phony fear of “rampant voter fraud” if we allow all-mail voting. He threatens to withhold federal aid to Democrat-governed states if they proceed with mail-in voting.

We shouldn’t be fighting partisan battles when we’re supposed to focus on the viral infection that kills Americans with no regard to whether they are Democrat or Republican.

It appears to me that we are locked in a hopeless divide that is growing perhaps too wide for a worldwide health crisis to bridge. If only Donald Trump could learn to abide by the oath he took when he became president of the United States.

What an utter shame.

medical news

Governor has learned the hard way how to deal with Trump

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I have to give Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer high marks for knowing how to work with a president of the United States who doesn’t understand the partnership aspect of governing.

Donald Trump keeps threatening states that don’t follow policies he favors. Whitmer, meanwhile, has told Axios that she “censors” her public comments about Trump believing that if she pulls her punches that Trump won’t cut her state off from federal aid she insists it deserves.

At issue of course is the coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s game-playing with governors who are fighting the medical crisis the best way they can. Trump keeps sending conflicting messages. He doesn’t want states to enact all-mail voting available for the presidential election, spewing lies about “rampant voter fraud.” Whitmer, meanwhile, seeks to wage the fight against the virus with virtually no emotional support from a president whose sole focus is riveted on his attempt to win re-election.

I need to mention that Whitmer reportedly is among the candidates being considered for a vice-presidential spot on the Democratic ticket led by former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

I suspect strongly that if she gets the nod, she won’t “censor” her remarks as she hits the campaign trail.

Still, for now she’s trying to do her job. If it means softening her comments about Donald Trump, I’m OK with that.