Tag Archives: pandemic

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.

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

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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.

national news

Trump says we’re ‘respected all around the world’? Not exactly …

OK, folks. I have very little to add to an item I am reposting on this blog.

Except to say that it was published this weekend in Irish Times. Ireland is a key ally of the United States. The Irish have been wish us through thick and thin. They’ve gone to war with us. They have emigrated to our shores and contributed mightily to our culture.

Get a load of how one Irish citizen, Finlan O’Toole, views the way we are responding to the global pandemic.

***

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality.

The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful. Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode?
 The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations.

Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic. As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted … like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.” It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – willfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.


The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a
shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.


If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated. Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas? It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

Abject surrender

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.


Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order. In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.


Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.” This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fueled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus. It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right. Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralyzed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted. The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”.

Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.

Fertile ground

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it. There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection. Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder. And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realization that the
antics have to end.

No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here. That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behavior has become normalized. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality. And this will get worse before it gets better.

Trump has at least
 eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is reveling in it. He is in his element. As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more deathwish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics. Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again

national news

What is with this so-called ‘leader’ of an entire nation?

Someone needs to explain to me how a U.S. president who declares himself to be a “wartime” leader, who vows to “unify” the nation, can get away with saying this about other elected officials in this great nation.

He put this ditty out on Twitter this morning:

Why should the people and taxpayers of America be bailing out poorly run states (like Illinois, as example) and cities, in all cases Democrat run and managed, when most of the other states are not looking for bailout help? I am open to discussing anything, but just asking?

What in the world is our “Dipsh** in Chief,” Donald Trump, saying here? Is he suggesting that if these “poorly run states … and cities” were run by Republicans that they would be getting all they help they sought from the feds? Or is he saying that party identity is the sole reason they are suffering so badly by the coronavirus pandemic?

Good grief, man! I didn’t think Trump could sound more idiotic than when he ran for the presidency, but he has delivered the goods in spades since taking office. His response to the pandemic is offering proof damn near hourly of his unfitness for the office to which he was elected.

A “wartime president” is obligated to speak to all Americans, to offer care and compassion to all of us, to seek common ground in the fight against a common enemy. This enemy, the viral infection called COVID-19, is killing Republicans and Democrats without a single regard to its victims’ party affiliation.

There is no limit to the depths Donald John Trump will plunge as he continues to disgrace this country.

national news

It’s fair to ask: Is this POTUS losing it?

The questions arising from Donald Trump’s remarkable riff the other day about “disinfectants” reportedly has some folks close to the president wondering about the “very stable genius.”

According to the New York Times, Trump’s allies are so rattled by Trump’s musing about whether an ingestion of disinfectants could cure someone of the coronavirus COVID-19 that they persuaded him to remove himself from the daily “briefings” that I now refer to as “rants.”

Or, as the Times reported: Mr. Trump’s typical name-calling can be recast to receptive audiences as mere “counterpunching.” His impeachment was explained away as the dastardly opus of overreaching Democrats. It is more difficult to insist that the man floating disinfectant injection knows what he’s doing.

The ongoing interest in Trump’s bizarre riff has caused Dr. Deborah Birx, one of Trump’s medical experts charged with responding to the pandemic, to wonder why the disinfectant issue is still being discussed. Well, doc, it’s because it came from the mouth of the president of the United States.

The Times also notes that politicians such as President George W. Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have at times been prone to gaffes, but Trump is in a league of his own when it comes to misstatements, lies and “stark pronouncements” based on ignorance.

And, yes, it gives many of us reason to wonder if this guy “knows what he’s doing.”

national news

‘Presidential temperament’ is missing

I was given a crash course while working as a young reporter in Oregon on what it means to have proper “judicial temperament.”

My editor assigned a story that allowed me to look into the bench conduct of a Clackamas County trial judge. We had heard of complaints leveled against this judge and my editor set me on a course to determine the veracity of the complaints. They were mostly true, so I wrote the story and the newspaper published it.

I am trying to transfer the issue of judicial temperament to a discussion I don’t hear much these days while the nation discusses the presidency of Donald Trump.

The more I watch this individual flail and flounder under the pressure of the coronavirus pandemic, the more convinced I become — as if I needed any convincing — that he lacks “presidential temperament.” 

Proper judicial temperament, I learned, includes traits that enable a judge to treat litigants and their legal counsel with courtesy, to treat witnesses with respect and to honor the service of jurors who are tapped to sit in judgment of their peers.

Proper presidential temperament in a time of crisis requires that presidents exhibit compassion, empathy, strong leadership, maturity, knowledge and trust.

The judge I examined in the late 1970s exhibited little proper judicial temperament. The president we are examining today demonstrates next to zero presidential temperament.

The viral infection has killed more than 54,000 Americans. We don’t know where the death toll will end. Donald Trump cannot, or will not, demonstrate the kind of empathetic understanding one expects from our president.

His leadership qualities produce waffling, changing of mind, mixed messaging. In the span of 24 hours, Trump went from praising the Republican governor of Georgia for his decision to lift restrictions brought by the pandemic to criticizing him acting too hastily.

His continual excoriating of the media reveal an amazing immaturity in a president who doesn’t grasp what all of his predecessors have understood, that the media’s job is to hold government officials accountable for their statements and deeds.

Donald Trump lacks knowledge at every level of this pandemic. He mused aloud this past week about whether we could kill the virus by allowing individuals to ingest “disinfectants.” When the pandemic broke out, he boasted about the then-total of 15 cases vanishing to zero “like a miracle.”

Trump is the most untrustworthy man ever to occupy the presidency. His incessant, relentless lying provides all the proof anyone needs.

If we’re going to demand that a president exhibit the proper temperament to lead a nation — particularly now when its citizens are frightened by an “invisible enemy — then we have to examine the fundamental lack of presidential temperament exhibited repeatedly by Donald John Trump.