It’s your lying ignorance, Mr. POTUS

March 8, 2020 kanelis2012

Donald John Trump’s lack of credibility was on full display as he toured the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

He claims to know everything about the coronavirus and the impact its outbreak is having on the nation and around the world.

According to DeadState.com: “I like this stuff,” Trump said. “I really get it … Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”

Umm. No, Mr. President. You don’t.

Your only “natural ability” that I can discern is to lie with impunity, with no regard, or awareness or understanding of how badly you do it, how transparently false your statements sound to those of us who hear them.

Trump’s credibility in handling the coronavirus crisis is at utterly zero, no matter the fawning praise heaped on him by Vice President Mike Pence or any of the other sycophants who do his bidding.

If we ever hear from a single doctor who can confirm what Trump says about his knowledge of the coronavirus, I will eat my words.

Sports news

MLB confronts a new season reeling from controversy

March 8, 2020 kanelis2012

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is a man with a spotlight shining on his every move.

MLB is reeling from a controversy involving a recent World Series championship team, the Houston Astros, who were caught in a massive sign-stealing scandal that has put a stain on their 2017 World Series victory.

What is happening now is that other teams’ pitchers are throwing “payback” pitches at Astros hitters. Manfred has vowed to be more aggressive than before in handing out punishment for pitchers who are determined to be exacting revenge on Astros players who were on that winning team three seasons ago.

Throwing “purpose pitches” is part of the game. Pitchers don’t like hitters crowding home plate. They will throw pitches that aim to “brush them back” off the plate. That’s a purpose pitch. Occasionally, pitchers take that practice to an extreme. When a hitter stands in the batter’s box to admire a home he has just hit into the stands, pitchers often take offense at being shown up; the next time up for the batter then becomes personal and pitchers occasionally hit batters on purpose as payback.

This year presents a serious potential problem for Manfred and managers who face the Astros. One of the competing managers, Joe Maddon of the Los Angeles Angels, has said he won’t tolerate that kind of behavior among his staff of pitchers. He said he intends to urge them to not throw at Astros hitters. The game must go on and teams must play it with integrity, Maddon believes.

I am all for that kind of approach.

As for Manfred, well, he has his hands full.

Many players and managers are angry that none of the Astros players involved in the cheating has been punished. I get that. However, that is not the players’ fault. Accordingly, throwing a hardball traveling at 95 mph at a player’s head constitutes a potentially deadly overreaction to a transgression that didn’t put anyone in imminent danger.

Let’s just play ball.

national news

POTUS exhibits extreme envy of a former POTUS

March 7, 2020 kanelis2012

Critics of this blog are going to accuse me of engaging in psychobabble, but I am going to post these brief thoughts anyway.

Donald John Trump, to my way of thinking, is exhibiting extreme envy of his immediate predecessor, Barack Hussein Obama.

That seems to me to be the only reason he keeps trying to run down the former president’s accomplishments. For instance, Trump threw this little gem out today on Twitter: Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation. The April 2009-10 Swine Flu, where nearly 13,000 people died in the U.S. was poorly handled. Ask MSDNC & lightweight Washington failure @RonaldKlain, who was the President then?

See? There you go. He keeps trying to suggest that President Obama’s two terms — to which he was elected both times with healthy majorities — just didn’t cut it.

Well, Trump is lying … which is no surprise to anyone with half a brain.

Why, though, does he keep insisting that Barack Obama was such a failure? Let me take a brief stab at it.

I believe he envies Obama. He looks at the way President Obama handled himself in public. He is jealous of the way the public responded to Obama’s grace, his calm, his class, his dignity. Can you imagine Donald Trump ever leading a grief-stricken church congregation in the wake of a massacre in South Carolina in a rendition of “Amazing Grace”? Try picturing Trump shedding a tear when talking about children and their teachers being murdered in a school as Obama did when mourning the shooting deaths in Newtown, Conn.

The public still yearns for that kind of presidential compassion and empathy. It finds none of it in No. 45.

And so when his Twitter fingers get itchy, he lashes out with nonsense. He directs his anger and his envy at the man he succeeded as president, at the man who continues to engender more admiration and outright love from a public that for the most part disdains Donald Trump.

The current president simply sickens me.

local news

Sod Poodles giving back to a supportive community

March 7, 2020 kanelis2012

They’re getting ready to play some hardball again in Amarillo, Texas. The city’s AA franchise, the Sod Poodles, are training in Arizona at this moment alongside their parent ballclub, the National League’s San Diego Padres.

I want, though, to take a brief moment to salute the Sod Poodles and their commitment to the community that has fallen madly in love with the team.

The team is becoming partners with charitable organizations associated with the Texas Panhandle.

For example, they’re teaming up with the Amarillo Area Foundation to raise money for this and that cause; at a date during the season, proceeds from tickets sold will go to the American Cancer Society, which has an active chapter in Amarillo. I’m sure there will be plenty of these kinds of partnerships.

The Sod Poodles have a Facebook page with all the information you might want to see about the upcoming activities.

My point is that professional sports get pilloried all the time for the seeming greed among athletes, owners, management. I want to take a moment to toss a bouquet to the community where I once lived and to the baseball club that entertains thousands of fans every night at Hodgetown, where the Sod Poodles play their home games.

This is what brings communities together.

Well done, team and fans.

Play ball … in due time!

State news

Do not seek to bring back straight-ticket voting!

March 7, 2020 kanelis2012

I will get straight to the point with this blog post.

South Texas Democrats have rocks in their noggins if they intend to argue that the elimination of straight-ticket, partisan voting is unconstitutional and that it discriminates against minority voters.

Readers of High Plains Blogger know that I detest straight-ticket voting. The Texas Legislature finally — as in finally — saw the light in 2017 and eliminated the provision that allows voters to walk into the polling booth and punch straight “Democrat” or straight “Republican.” Wham! That’s it! Then you get to leave.

A lawsuit filed in Webb County by the Texas Democratic Party and Webb County Democrats seeks to bring the practice back. They didn’t like the long lines that slowed the voting process to a crawl in many urban areas. Many voters, namely African-Americans and Latinos, stood in line for as long as eight or nine hours waiting to vote.

How come? I guess because voters ahead of them were taking the time to examine the ballots carefully before casting their votes.

What is wrong with that? Nothing, I tell ya!

I have argued for years that if Texans want to vote straight ticket, then they should be allowed to do so only after they examine each ballot entry. I also have argued that straight-ticket voting has resulted in qualified office seekers and incumbents losing their election or re-election efforts simply because they belong to the “wrong” political party. In recent years it’s been Democrats who suffer the most. In earlier times, Republicans suffered the same fate.

Allowing straight-ticket voting in Texas, in my mind, contributes to the continued dumbing down of the electorate.

Texas Republicans who argued for a change in the law had it right when they argued that disallowing straight-ticket voting would produce a more enlightened voting public.

I happen to agree with that logic. The current system doesn’t require voters to study the issues and the candidates. It just gives them more incentive to do so. If they want to vote for every candidate of a single party, then they are still allowed to do so.

That is where the unconstitutionality argument breaks down for me.

Therefore, South Texas Democrats do have rocks in their heads.

national news

Welcome to the worst job in D.C., Rep. Meadows

March 7, 2020 kanelis2012

Here we go again, more drama in the West Wing of the White House.

Donald John Trump, the nation’s current president, has pushed Mick Mulvaney out the door and brought in his fourth White House chief of staff in less than a single term as president.

The new guy is Mark Meadows, the soon-to-retire congressman from North Carolina.

I guess he surrenders his House seat now that he becomes part of the executive branch of government. No overlap allowed, under the U.S. Constitution. Right? Well, Trump likely doesn’t know that, given his demonstrated ignorance about the nation’s governing document.

It’s interesting — at least it is to me — that Meadows doesn’t have the “acting” tag attached to his new title. Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman, gave up his Office of Management and Budget job to take on the worst job in Washington, D.C. Oh yeah, he still had the title as OMB director, but he couldn’t do both jobs, as the chief of staff job was so demanding of his time and energy.

Meadows now joins a list of former WH chiefs: Reince Priebus, John Kelly and now Mulvaney. Trump has pushed all of ’em out of the White House.

Will this guy bring any sense of order, discipline and smooth management to the White House? Hah! Good luck with that.

He still works at the “pleasure of the president.” If we’ve learned anything about No. 45, it is that he doesn’t allow the chief of staff to do the job he is supposed to do.

The clown show goes on.

economic news

SXSW falls victim to coronavirus

March 7, 2020 kanelis2012

The coronavirus scare has just hit a lot of Texans where it hurts.

Austin city officials have canceled the annual South by Southwest music and art festival. Why? They don’t want to expose the thousands of spectators who had planned to flock to the Hill Country to the threat of the virus.

Well now. This is how you measure the economic impact of the coronavirus.

SXSW means a lot to many folks who flock to Austin each year. They get a chance to experience the Texas brand of music. And oh brother, the event draws plenty of top-drawer acts to the Texas capital city. SXSW brought in an estimated $350 million to the Austin-area economy in 2019.

It might be rescheduled. Or, it might have to be put aside for a year. Maybe longer, yes?

According to the Austin Business Journal: Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt said cancellation was a data-driven decision and not made out of “panic.”

“This is a decision based on expert medical opinion that we should cancel or discourage festivals and mass gatherings countywide that are drawing participants from other areas of the country and the world that have documented cases of person-to-person transmission,” she said.

This is a prudent call. It was the only decision that made sense, given the exposure that many folks might have had by mingling with thousands of others.

They call it “community transmission.” It involves people touching other people. There’s a lot of that kind of activity at SXSW.

Good call, folks.

There’s always next year. We hope.

local news

Daylight Saving Time? No big deal … really!

March 7, 2020 kanelis2012

Oh, how I have to chuckle at all the hand-wringing over what’s about to occur this weekend.

We’re going to bed Saturday night and will awaken the next morning with the sky staying dark an hour longer than it did the previous day. The good news, as I see it, is that the sun will stay in the sky an hour later than it did at the end of the day.

Yep, Daylight Saving Time will be upon us once again. We’ll have it until November.

Why the worry among many of us ? I guess some folks just don’t like changing their schedule. They dislike losing an hour of sleep, which they wouldn’t really lose if they simply went to sleep an hour earlier than normal. You know?

The 2019 Texas Legislature flirted with the idea of scrapping DST. Legislators prepared a bill that would have produced a statewide referendum asking us three questions. We could vote to (a) change to permanent Standard Time (b) change to permanent Daylight Saving Time or (c) keep the status quo, meaning we would change times twice a year.

I never — ever! — have had a problem with switching back and forth. It doesn’t bother me in the least. However, were I given the choice I would vote to switch to permanent Daylight Saving Time. I like having the sun in the sky a little longer at the end of the day.

I realize the sun still sets earlier in the winter months than it does in the summer, given Earth’s rotation and how it tilts away from the sun in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter. However, I also appreciate the reason for establishing DST in the first place, which was to preserve energy by allowing us to keep the lights off a little longer in the late afternoon and early evening.

The Legislature ended up choking on the referendum. It never managed to put the issue to a vote. As I recall, legislators ran out of time. So the issue died a quiet death.

The 2021 Legislature might bring it up again. Fine. Go for it, ladies and gents. I’ll still vote for permanent DST if I get the chance.

Meantime, I welcome the return of Daylight Saving Time, even if it means we have to switch back to Standard Time in a few months.

It’s not a big deal, folks. Honest!

medical news, national news

Donald Trump: Are his survival ‘skills’ running out?

March 6, 2020 kanelis2012

Donald John Trump has lied his way through three-plus years of the presidency of the United States.

He has lied about the economic revival and the credit he hogs all for himself. Trump has lied about his business acumen and the manner in which he “built” a fortune. Trump has lied about his intention to forgo golf while running up the largest golfing tab in presidential history. Trump lied about the ease with which it would be to erase the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something better.

He lies when he doesn’t need to lie. He cannot tell the truth. He lies about big matters and small matters.

Yet his base sticks with him. They cling to this man’s idiocy.

Now he is lying about the administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak that threatens to become a pandemic. The latest set of lies, of course, now brings serious consequences. He endangers Americans by telling them the threat is overblown; he advises Americans that it’s OK to go to work even when they’re infected with a “slight” case of the virus.

Has this nitwit’s luck run out? Is the president now facing a situation that brings life and death consequences as a result of his incessant lying?

If a presidential administration needs anything at all at times like this, it needs to be seen as credible. It needs to be taken seriously. The president needs to be seen as a calming, steady and truthful presence on the national scene.

Donald Trump and his administration are none of the above. This medical emergency has brought out the worst in the president. It has revealed for all of us to see in plain sight that we cannot trust a single word that comes from this man’s mouth.

He is a dangerous man who remains fundamentally unfit for the office to which he was elected.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience