Tag Archives: Covid 19

political news, State news

Texas becomes battleground?

The national political media continue feed my heebie-jeebies.

They talk about Joe Biden’s national polling lead over Donald Trump. They suggest there might be a Democratic “tsunami” about to sweep Trump and many of his Republican congressional sycophants out of office in Washington.

Why, many commentators are looking at a recent Dallas Morning News/University of Texas-Tyler poll that puts the former vice president up by 5 percentage points over Trump. They use that poll result as evidence that Texas is about to cast its electoral votes for the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Whoa, now! Let’s hold on. Let’s catch our breath.

I am not yet ready to toss Texas into the Democrats’ sack of political goodies. This is among the reddest Republican states in the country. Every statewide elected official here is a Republican. It’s been an all-R state since 1998. The state’s transition from overwhelming Democrat to Republican has been stunning in the speed with which it occurred.

Is Joe Biden the Democratic presidential candidate to carry Texas across a new threshold? Hmm. I have trouble believing it, although my heart wishes it would happen.

As the Dallas Morning News reported: “I really do think that Biden could win Texas, and I didn’t think that as recently as even a month ago. But the landscape has shifted so much,” said Nancy Beck Young, chair of the University of Houston history department and a scholar of Texas politics.

The Morning News poll does suggest that since Texas is being stricken so cruelly by the COVID crisis that Texans at this moment are enraged by Trump’s feckless and reckless response to the emergency. That well might be reflected in the polling results.

I think it’s fair to suggest, though, that if Biden somehow manages to win more votes than Trump in Texas then we are looking at an epic political landslide that will bury Trump. Moreover, if Biden falls short by just a little bit — say, 2 or 3 percentage points — then that, too, might portend a significant political defeat for Donald Trump nationally.

Still, the media keep fueling my nervousness. I get that’s the media’s job. It is to report the news and polling statistics that suggest a staggering defeat of the self-proclaimed “smartest man in human history” — or words to that effect — most certainly should get our attention.

medical news

What took so long, Mr. POTUS?

Donald J. Trump finally saw fit to wear a mask in public, to do the very thing his team of infectious disease experts has been imploring the public to do while the nation fights a so-far losing battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

He donned the mask while touring Walter Reed Medical Center.

If only Donald Trump had decided, oh, about three months ago to do the right thing. What might have been the result? Here’s a thought: Given the cult of personality that has developed around this clown, there well might have been less political resistance from the Trumpkin Corps against wearing the mask. As a result, there could have been thousands fewer infections and thousands fewer deaths as a result.

But oh, no! Trump wasn’t going to wear a mask. It didn’t look, um, “presidential,” or so he inferred. I guess he’s changed his mind? Is that possible? Who the hell knows?

The surgeon general pleads with us to wear a mask in public; so does the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; same for the secretary of health and human services; the top medical experts on the White House pandemic response team say the same thing.

Closer to home, we’re hearing from governors, county officials, mayors, school leaders, hospital officials, emergency responders, firefighters and cops to do the same thing.

The president? Until just this weekend he has thought differently and has brought that vocal but shrinking base of supporters along with him.

Donald Trump should be ashamed. So should those who resist the mask-wearing and the mandates to take other precautions to avoid getting swept up in the pandemic crisis.

D’oh! I almost forgot! Donald Trump has no shame.

education news, local news, medical news, national news

Knock off threats to schools, Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump is now putting heat on governors to reopen public school systems, much like he tried to browbeat houses of worship leaders into packing pews in time for Easter and threatened governors to reopen their states … or else.

There is no “or else” for the president, given that he has no singular authority to tell governors how to run their states as they cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now he’s going after them on school reopening.

I found this quote from a former member of Congress, a guy I know, but who I haven’t spoken to in more than two decades. Former Rep. Nick Lampson writes: School re-openings must be based on science not the ineptitude of Donald Trump. We have a collective responsibility to protect the interests of America’s youth. Expecting kids to spend 8 hours a day in close quarters during a pandemic and threatening to defund public schools like some sort of authoritarian is not the sort of leadership we need in the White House.

Here in Texas, and specifically in Collin County, our school leaders are giving parents the option of sending their children back to the classroom or keep them at home in a sort of hybrid learning environment. Texas’s infection rate is soaring. We do not want our children exposed needlessly just because Donald Trump wants schools to reopen their classrooms.

While I am on the subject, Donald and Melania Trump have a son in school. Are they sending Barron back to class? I am not going to make the youngster an issue; I merely am asking the question to ascertain what kind of parental decisions the first couple are making with regard to their own son.

As for the rest of us, Donald Trump ought to let governors and the public educators who deserve praise and not threats decide how to handle their unique situations.

medical news

Dr. Fauci offers grim prognosis

“I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. We’re just not.”

That clearly is not the view expressed repeatedly by Donald John “Prevaricator in Chief” Trump. It is instead an opinion offered by the nation’s — if not the world’s — leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci is seriously concerned about the terrible spike in infection, hospitalization and death caused by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

The doc is contradicting directly the man for whom he works, the president of the United States. I am going to stand with the doctor’s view on where we stand in this fight against the pandemic.

Trump, meanwhile, is fighting for his political life and the pandemic — namely the federal response to it — isn’t providing Trump much ammo to use in his re-election campaign. Indeed, Donald Trump’s arsenal is spent; he is out of ammunition.

How in the world does the nation fight its way back from the medical brink? There is increasing talk about states returning to their shelter in place policies, shutting down businesses they had reopened, ordering Americans to do certain things to prevent the spread of the virus.

In Texas, where officials sought to restart the economy, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a mandatory mask-wearing order, told businesses to scale back their service to 50 percent of capacity. Yes, he has drawn fire for his order, namely from Republicans — if you can fathom that — who continue to insist that we reopen the business community despite the threat to people’s health and their very lives.

As for Dr. Fauci, he well might be writing his exit from the White House pandemic response team, where he has played a once-significant role that has been diminished of late because of Fauci’s disagreement with Donald Trump. Indeed, Trump has been critical openly of the good doctor, saying he has committed many “mistakes.” I haven’t heard a single example of what Trump considers to be a Fauci mistake.

Still, I am going to listen to the doctor. I am going to ignore the blathering of the politicians … especially the nation’s top pol, the guy who couldn’t tell us the unvarnished truth if his political career depended on it.

Oh, wait … !

national news

Would POTUS hide a positive result from us?

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It is fair to ask, given Donald Trump’s penchant for prevarication, to wonder how he might handle a positive test result on the COVID-19 virus.

My wandering mind asks: Is it at all possible that Donald Trump would seek to hide from the public a test — on himself — that came up positive?

I ask only because I distrust Trump’s ability or willingness to divulge the full truth were it to become necessary to tell us grim news about his own health. I don’t want to think he would hide that information from us, but I am pulled in that direction only because of his long-standing record of lying, of evasion, of deflection.

He does this at every turn, takes every opportunity to lie when all he has to do is tell us the truth. Trump has told us about his astonishing good health. I am forced to believe that anything that tells us something different wouldn’t be true to his own constant boasting.

I don’t want Donald Trump to fall ill. I also do not want him to hide it from us if he tests positive for a virus that poses a serious threat to the president’s very life. His record as a liar makes me wonder.

local news

No, Mr. POTUS … not ‘everyone’ behind a rush back to classroom

Donald Trump is getting way ahead of himself again. Imagine that, if you can.

Now he says “everyone” wants children to return to the classroom this fall. The “Educator in Chief,” though, is speaking way out of school, if you’ll pardon the pun. I am among the “everyone” to whom he refers and I am not yet ready to push our children back into classrooms.

Medical experts, including those who are “advising” him on the pandemic response, say something different. They caution against rushing to reopen public school classrooms. Donald Trump won’t be dissuaded from pursuing this latest form of political idiocy.

I no longer have kids in school. I do have a couple of grandkids, though, who finished the 2019-20 academic year at home. Their schools in Collin County, Texas, might decide to reopen their classrooms, or they might decide to keep the students at home, providing them with online study materials. Last time I looked, Texas’s rate of COVID-19 infection was soaring into the sky.

This gets directly to one of the points I want to make. Which is that these decisions will occur at the state level in conjunction with what local school officials recommend. The president of the United States has no authority to dictate what schools systems should do, just as he didn’t have any authority to order states to reopen their business communities.

Oh, but Trump now says he might withhold federal money to those states that do not order their schools to reopen their classrooms.

This is nothing but political bullying.

Do I want my grandkids back in class? Sure … but only if their schools can assure us they will be safe, that they will return to a learning environment that protects them from needless exposure to potential harm from a dangerous virus.

If they can’t provide that assurance, then students should stay home … and Donald Trump needs to keep his trap shut!

local news, medical news, national news, State news

When will GOP pols hit the wall as it regards POTUS?

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Here is my latest Question of the Day: When in the name of sane government will Republican governors around the country decide they have heard enough from Donald J. Trump?

I’ll look specifically at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, given that I am acquainted with him and he might actually see this blog post.

Abbott has slammed the brakes on the state’s reopening strategy in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. He has ordered masks in public places, told us to maintain social distancing, and ordered businesses to limit capacity. Yes, he was slow to enact the measures and, yes again, he is scaling back his too-quick order to reopen the state’s business community.

Abbott, though, at least is giving lip service to the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile, we hear from Donald Trump that the killer virus is going to disappear. It’ll be like a miracle, he says, adding, “I hope.”

Then came this tidbit from one of his Fourth of July weekend speeches: He said that 99 percent of all COVID-19 infections don’t amount to anything of consequence. Virtually all infections, he implied, are nothing to worry about.

Really! He said it. Oh, I guess I should point out that 130,000 Americans have died, which is about 20 percent of the worldwide death count.

These Republican politicians need to speak out forcefully, telling Donald Trump to keep his trap shut. Every time he dismisses the death counts, makes light of the infection rates, calls for “less testing,” he makes state and local politicians’ duties that much more difficult.

He’s got that damn bully pulpit that he is misusing to the detriment of Americans’ health. GOP politicians need to start calling him out.

Gov. Abbott, I’m talking to you!

entertainment news

Social distancing produces this kind of entertainment

OK, there’s so very little positive to come out of the coronavirus pandemic … then there’s this.

I am seeing a number of these “social distancing” videos coming forth from musicians who aren’t performing in the same room. They manage to cobble together versions of classic tunes. The video that accompanies this brief blog post is one of them. I have watched multiple times a pair of videos assembled by The Doobie Brothers singing two of their many hits.

I can’t stop smiling when I see these pieces of artwork.

Man, technology can produce some wondrous things.

State news

Censure the governor? Are you serious?

I have to ask: What in the name of public safety has happened to the Texas Republican Party?

The Ector County GOP hierarchy has voted to censure their fellow Republican, Gov. Greg Abbott over Abbott’s executive order requiring Texans to wear masks in public places.

Why did Abbott do such a dastardly thing? Oh, he wants to stop the spread of a virus that has killed 130,000 Americans. For taking that action, the Texas Republican Party is launching a campaign to conduct a statewide censure movement ahead of its political convention scheduled soon.

This is utterly ridiculous! It’s insane! It’s certifiable lunacy!

Don’t get me wrong on this point: Greg Abbott is not my favorite Texas pol. He dilly-dallied on taking measures to stop the virus in Texas. He plunged full speed into reopening the state. The infection rate spiked as a result, along with the death rate from COVID-19. Abbott has hit the “pause” button on the restart.

I wish he had done so earlier … but he did and I am glad about that.

However, there’s a lot of bitching going on throughout the state among Republicans who’ve swallowed the Donald Trump Kool-Aid about the coronavirus. They want the state to continue to press ahead with reopening. I have a couple of friends in the Texas Panhandle — business owners, in fact — who complain openly about what they believe is some sort of communist plot within the GOP.

I am not kidding! These are dedicated Republicans who have swilled the concoction that makes ’em believe the coronavirus ain’t that big of a deal.

There’s talk now about a special legislative session that would seek to reel in what GOP loons say is Abbott’s executive overreach. Good grief! The man is seeking to stop the spread of a disease that is killing us.

local news, medical news

Face mask order forces me to acquire new habits

It has taken an order from the Texas governor to get me to step it up with this “new normal” way of doing things.

I don’t begrudge Greg Abbott for issuing the order, even though I do endorse the notion that he was a bit late in declaring it. That said, I won’t dwell on its timeliness.

Abbott has told us to wear masks when we venture to public places if we live in counties with 20 or more coronavirus infections. Well, in Collin County we, um, are well past that “magic number.”

My wife has been much better about complying with voluntary new normal procedures than I have been. I guess it took the order from Gov. Abbott to get me to pay attention. He issued it and I am heeding it to the letter.

To be sure, I wish we didn’t have to wear these masks. It’s awfully hot out there and the masks make me sweat. However, the cost of not wearing one — in addition to maintaining that “social distance” thing — is too serious to ignore.

Even though I don’t like wearing the masks, I dislike getting sick even more. I seriously dislike the notion of possibly dying from the illness known as COVID-19. More to the point than even that, I shudder at the thought of my family members being sickened by the virus. They know who they are and I am imploring all of them to follow the rules … to the letter.

If it takes a government order to keep my loved ones and me healthy, then I’m all in. You will not hear me gripe about surrendering my “civil liberties” or being told how to behave.

The alternative to all of that could be pretty damn grim … and I am unwilling to pay that price.