Tag: Trump

Categories
News News Blog

President Trump Bans Social Media Apps TikTok and WeChat

CREDIT: Kon Karampelas

Kon Karampelas

Late Thursday evening, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders banning social media apps TikTok and WeChat from operating in the United States in 45 days.

President Trump Bans Social Media Apps TikTok and WeChat

Under the ban, transactions between American companies and citizens and the Chinese tech giant Tencent would be prohibited if they are not sold to American companies under the allotted time.

The executive orders do not state what ownership percentage or global markets would have to be given to American companies to pause the ban. The Trump administration has also stated that any deal would have to include a “substantial amount of money” coming to the U.S. Treasury.

The Trump administration had been critical of the apps, stating that their data collection process could put Americans at risk despite numerous experts citing their data collection practices were on par with the industry standard.

Nonetheless, in his executive orders, President Trump stated that the apps could “allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

President Trump had initially set a deadline of Sept. 15 for when ByteDance, owner of TikTok, would need to sell the social media app to an American-owned company. Microsoft has been in talks of acquiring TikTok’s business in certain markets, specifically the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but has shown little interest in their other markets.

The move leaves a lot in the air as Tencent is also the owner of some of the largest U.S.-based game developers in the world. The company retains full ownership of Riot Games, developers of popular games League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, and Valorant; 40 percent ownership of Epic Games, developers of the popular shooter Fortnite; and 5 percent ownership of Activision Blizzard, the parent company of the developers of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Destiny 2.

Though White House officials confirmed that the initial wave of bans will not affect video game companies owned by Tencent, potential Chinese retaliation and subsequent executive orders could put them at risk.

President Trump Bans Social Media Apps TikTok and WeChat (2)

TikTok released a statement following the announcement where it expressed confusion and shock at the decision.

“For nearly a year, we have sought to engage with the US government in good faith to provide a constructive solution to the concerns that have been expressed. What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Pot is Bubbling

CREDIT: CNN.com

This country, like most around the world, has its haves and its have-nots. Only a blind fool would argue that those with money, influence, and the right skin color don’t have it easier than those with none of the above. There’s no official caste system in the United States, but there are two Americas — two judicial systems, two kinds of law enforcement, two healthcare systems, two tax systems, two educational systems, two voting systems, two media ecosystems — two kinds of democracy.

CNN.com

Our Constitution proclaims lofty ideals, meant to apply to all of the American people. But too often those ideals are circumvented by money and influence. Too often, poverty is a permanent position. Poor and under-educated people are useful to those in power, and can be more easily controlled — or provoked. They can be pushed around, kept in place by sub-standard pay and work conditions and lack of healthcare, kept in place by restricted voting rights, fewer voting locations, and cartoonish gerrymandering. Voting by mail? Don’t be silly. That’s reserved for important people.

Those without influence or power have few options for expressing their frustrations. Senators don’t take their calls. Congressmen are at lunch with lobbyists. The people don’t have lobbyists. Most in power pay little attention to the people, until things boil over.

The pot is beginning to bubble.

Governors and cabinet ministers and federal and state agency heads are not out of work, nor are they particularly or personally impacted by a disease that’s ravaging communities, overloading our hospitals, shutting down small and large businesses of every stripe, putting millions out of work, and disrupting our children’s education.

Too often, our leaders sound like Governor Mike Parson of Missouri, who said this week: “These kids have got to get back to school. And if they do get COVID-19, which they will — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.”

Because that’s how this virus works. Nobody else will get the disease. Just the children — your children — and they’ll be fine. Nothing to see here. Get your brats in school. And get the teachers and support staff in there, too. Shut up. Move along.

This attitude comes from the top, from a president who sees the opening of schools as the critical pivot point to opening the economy, the only chance he sees for his re-election. Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary who’d like to privatize the education system, echoes the president’s sentiments. Open the schools. Or else. I am the boss of you.

I’ve got news for them: Schools are not going to open next month in places where this disease is running rampant. Those that do open in those areas will have very few kids and very few teachers. They will be battling quarantines, shutdowns, and disruptions every day. People will not risk their children’s health, no matter who tells them to do it. Mothers and fathers can take to the streets, too, believe it or not. I’ve seen it.

The pot is bubbling.

Two systems. In one, convicted felons like Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort are escorted from prison in nice suits and allowed to serve their sentences at home because the threat of COVID is too great for men of their stature to be in prison. The thousands of others who remain behind bars, many convicted of lesser crimes? They’re on the wrong side of the divide. Sorry. No power, no money, no friends in high places? Suck it up. Wash your hands.

Two systems. In one, the nice uniformed police officer pulls you over in your nice car and politely issues you a ticket — or a warning. In the other, you’re tackled on the street by unidentified men in camouflage carrying automatic weapons and thrown into an unmarked van. No arrest warrant, no reason given. America!

I haven’t seen the country this angry, this divided, since the late 1960s. The pot is bubbling. And the man at the top is preparing to turn up the burner, planning to put more unmarked, unidentified troops from Customs and Border Patrol in more American cities, hoping as hard as he can that protesters will come out to help make great television for the rubes who fear the scary BLM peril and the Marxists and the Antifa, and who love seeing them get beaten and tear-gassed on Fox News. Law and order!

We’re living in historic and momentous times. The choice is coming for all of us. Stand and be counted or watch a wave of authoritarianism roll over us. Two systems. Two ways forward. One future. Our choice.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

“Bounty” Scandal Shows Again How Putin Owns Trump

Stop it!

There is no way to explain President Trump’s lack of action in response to U.S. intelligence showing Russia paid bounties for the murder of American soldiers. Even worse, there is no explanation for why congressional Republicans aren’t raising hell over Trump’s silence.

Juan Williams

Some military veterans are speaking up: “Putin pays bounties to Taliban enemies to kill American soldiers and not a word from Donald Trump,” says the narrator in an ad from the group “VoteVets.” In a different ad from the same group, the narrator says: “Benedict Arnold can step aside, because Benedict Donald is America’s No. 1 traitor.”

I get uneasy when political players start throwing around loaded words like “traitor.” But what’s the choice now? Trump’s only defense is to say he was not told about the intelligence and did not read his briefing book.

“Either way, it is an unjustifiable dereliction of duty,” tweeted Joe Biden, the Democrats’ nominee for president.

Trump is also hiding behind the fact that the intelligence is not totally confirmed. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the idea that Trump did not react to the report because the intelligence agencies did not have a “100 percent consensus.” She called it a “con.”

“We would practically be investigating nothing if you had to start off at 100 percent. … Just because they didn’t have 100 percent consensus, should this not be briefed to the president of the United States?” Pelosi said.

Keep in mind the seriousness of the Russian bounty report. The Washington Post reported that in April 2019 there was an attack in Afghanistan killing three Marines and “those who planned it may have been paid a bounty by a Russian military intelligence unit to kill Americans.”

So it is hard to say which is worse: Either Trump did not read his written briefing report or his aides thought it best not to tell him. Whatever the case, it is shockingly clear that the President of the United States did nothing.

So, where is the shouting from all those flag-waving congressional Republicans? Their current silence reminds me of their quiet when the Trump administration did nothing to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Trump even enlisted fellow Republicans in demonizing the FBI for looking into the plot.

Trump called the probe into Russian election interference a “hoax.” Now he is calling news of the Russian bounty intelligence a “hoax.” He is keeping Republicans in line by linking the election-tampering probe to the questions about the bounty scandal. He said this latest outrage is “possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax … wanting to make Republicans look bad!!”

But it is an outrage to play politics with a matter of life and death for American soldiers.  And it is particularly galling when you consider how they attacked people who asked questions about the Iraq War — people like me. They smeared critics of Bush’s Iraq War as traitors. So, where are today’s Republicans calling out the Trump administration for its lack of response?

The only action by the Trump administration has been to start a probe to find out who leaked news of the intelligence reports to newspapers. That diversionary tactic is consistent with Trump’s failure to handle foreign affairs throughout his presidency.

The American people see it. In the current RealClearPolitics average of polls, 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign policy. Trump’s foreign policy failures are too numerous to list in one column, but here are some of the lowlights:

Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has not only cost Americans jobs but has ceded our leadership role in the world to countries like China.

“Trump didn’t want to hear [early reports about the coronavirus in China] because he didn’t want to hear bad things about [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping. … He didn’t want to hear bad things about the Chinese economy that could affect the ‘fantastic’ trade deal he was working on,” former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton recently told ABC News.

Trump failed to act against North Korea for the murder of American student Otto Warmbier and never got a nuclear deal with Kim Jong-un.

He has exacerbated tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians by giving enormous concessions to the Netanyahu government.

And perhaps, most dangerously, Trump failed to halt Iran’s nuclear program after ripping up President Obama’s nuclear deal — which was working.

The Democratic National Committee has started running ads hitting Trump’s stumbles on foreign policy. “Trump said he’d get tough on China,” a narrator intones. “He didn’t get tough. He got played.”

And once again, Trump — and our troops and the American people — are getting played by Russia.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

American Idiot

Was it only a little more than three months ago when President Trump was loudly disparaging countries that hadn’t controlled the coronavirus — like China, Italy, Greece, and Germany? When the president of the mighty United States was smugly banning travel from China and the European Union?

Well, yes, actually, it was. I know it’s hard to keep up with such things when every day brings six new scandals, but on March 12th, in a nationally televised speech, the president unilaterally and abruptly announced that the United States would ban travelers from Europe, following an earlier ban on travel from China.

At the end of his 10-minute speech, Trump added this amazingly arrogant and stupid prediction: “The virus will not stand a chance against us.”

Actually, COVID-19 now stands a better chance against the United States than against any other country on the planet. Along with Brazil and Russia (two other countries with incompetent leaders), the United States is now a raging epicenter for the COVID pandemic. With 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25 percent of the world’s coronavirus cases — and 25 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths. The infection level in this country is rising at an unprecedented rate, as several Republican governors scramble to close down their states after arrogantly and stupidly opening them for business as infection rates were rising — following our “stable genius” president’s lead. 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee gets a special “I’m Extra Stupid” award for even now not allowing the state’s mayors to require masks in their cities. (And for pushing through an illegal and unenforceable abortion ban bill. But I digress.)

Science is so overrated, apparently. Karma, unfortunately, is not.

Thanks to this administration’s incompetent response to the global pandemic, my wife, a French citizen, can no longer go visit her family — nor can millions of other Americans who want to do business or take vacations or visit family in Europe. Now, we are a shithole country, banned from traveling to civilized societies.

Several other significant stories have broken recently, collapsing on top of each other like a tower of Jenga blocks, each a stunner that would have destroyed any presidency before this one.

The president’s personal lawyer, aka Attorney General Bill Barr, has been stepping all over the justice system — getting friends of the president out of stiff sentences, releasing them from jail, and firing the attorney general in the Southern District of New York (who happened to be handling several cases involving Trump and his allies). Barr’s behavior was so egregious it caused longtime Justice Department prosecutors to turn whistleblower. But, meh, now it’s just another small explosion in Trump’s media minefield. A mere diversion.

Then CNN broke a story from Trump officials who had witnessed the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders. Here’s a sample: “In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior U.S. officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers, and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the president himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

“The calls caused former top Trump deputies — including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials — to conclude that the president was often ‘delusional,’ as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders.”
CNN.com

One final detail: Our president called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “stupid.” Merkel, it should be noted, has a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry.

Okay, so Trump screwed up the coronavirus response and got us banned from Europe; his AG is deconstructing the Justice Department; he’s stupid, ill-informed, and abusive on phone calls with foreign leaders. A pretty devastating week, right?

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that little thing where Trump was informed that Russia had set up a cash bounty hunt with the Taliban on U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan — and ignored it.

The president at first denied he’d been informed about it. The next day, The New York Times, citing two U.S. intelligence officials, reported that the information was in Trump’s daily briefing on February 27th. The White House spokesperson then responded that the administration was still considering its options.

The United States has become a banana republic, run by a narcissistic grifter, the kind of guy who blithely posts a video of a man shouting “white power” and then goes to play golf. We have a vice president who again this week praised the president’s response to the pandemic as “wonderful.” We have an administration run by incompetent toadies and lobbyists. And we have the entire leadership of a major American political party marching in lockstep with it all, as if blindfolded.

I’ve run out of faith that the American democratic institutions that have guided the country past the pitfalls of nefarious leaders and human inadequacy for 250 years are going to put the brakes on Donald Trump. Except for maybe the election process. Maybe. At this point, our only hope seems to be to survive this idiot until November and vote him out, along with his corrupt enablers. Only then can we begin the long and painful recovery from this unprecedented disaster of an administration.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Spiking the Ball Too Soon: The March Against Racism Isn’t Over

CREDIT: Dubesor | Dreamstime.com

I spiked the ball way too early. It was January 20, 2009, and I was sitting on makeshift bleachers inside the Children’s Museum of Memphis for a live viewing of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the United States. My daughter, Sofia, was there with her 4th-grade class from Grahamwood Elementary, seated in a larger section for other Shelby County children. She was four months shy of her 10th birthday, but Sofia knew she was witnessing a moment. I knew we were witnessing a moment.

I chuckled — much of the adult audience chuckled — when Chief Justice John Roberts stumbled in reciting the oath of office Mr. Obama was to repeat. Hey, the Chief Justice was witnessing a moment. At the conclusion of President Obama’s inspiring speech — so many delivered before that moment, and so many delivered since — I stood up and tightly hugged the person next to me, a complete stranger. An African-American woman smiling, like me, to hold back the tears. It was a moment.

Dubesor | Dreamstime.com

And I spiked the ball. My family actually blew out candles that night on a cake with “Obama” and blue stars scripted in frosting. I never said it out loud, but I convinced myself that America had finally arrived at a place where racism could be swept into the dustbin of human failures, our country’s original sin finally exorcised, the symbol being an eloquent, composed, funny, and compassionate 47-year-old man whose father was Kenyan. A black man was president of the United States. Turns out there was, in fact, an American dream. One for all of us.

Yet somehow we’re here, in June 2020, a month history will record as the first in which an American president sprayed chemicals to disperse a crowd of Americans, then built a fence around the White House. The atrocity of Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t painful for who he is: a hopelessly deficient thinker, a liar and narcissist, and a racist who doesn’t recognize the reasons for his racism. No, it’s the fact that a monster like Trump could be elected via the experiment in democracy we call the United States. Whatever we gained on January 20, 2009 — the energy within every hug shared that day — has been leg-swept by forces that, quite literally, threaten the democratic framework of our country.

Inspiration is there, though. And hope, that human trait President Obama identified as audacious. Thousands of Americans have taken to city streets all across the country — during a pandemic — to say we, as a people, have had enough, that cruelty toward any American is cruelty toward all of us. We’ve had enough. And don’t expect the protests to “die down,” like others we’ve seen after one unarmed black man was killed or another. George Floyd is this century’s Emmett Till. Just as Till’s 1955 lynching added booster fuel to the American civil rights movement, Floyd’s murder will change policing in America. I’m not sure if she coined the phrase herself, but I love an expression my sister (in Seattle) recently shared: “Respect existence, or expect resistance.”

Change is coming. Matter of fact, it’s already happened. Not one, but four white police officers are facing charges in Floyd’s death. “Black Lives Matter” can be read from outer space on a Washington D.C. street that leads to the White House. As for the current commander in chief, military officials past and present are speaking openly and publicly against Trump’s unhinged approach to what he calls law and order.

January 20, 2009 seems so very long ago. I don’t regret my joy that day. I only regret leaping to conclusions our country wasn’t ready to confirm. But we’re getting there. And I’m prepared to continue the march toward a promised land — however we might define it — even if I do so wearing a mask.

Frank Murtaugh is managing editor of Memphis magazine. He writes about sports for the Flyer.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Anthony Marcuzzo, McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine

Tony, Tony, Tony

Posted to Twitter by @BossesMemphis

Anthony Marcuzzo was excoriated on Memphis social media this weekend after he allegedly rammed protesters with his vehicle in Cooper-Young.

Within moments, Marcuzzo’s picture was all over Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. People raged about the incident and raged more later when they realized Marcuzzo was released with a ticket. However, the Memphis Police Department issued a statement afterward saying that they are conducting a further investigation.

Here are some choice tweets:

@PEOPLEOFMEMPHIS — “HEARIN THIS IS THE MF THAT RAN INTO SOMEONE … OLE SONIC PARKING LOT, DIP CAN HEAD ASS BOY

@Thestablegenius — Real bass pro energy

@Marissakizer — THE ONLY THING HE SAID TO US AFTER ATTEMPTING MURDER IS “I’m trying to get to the lake”

By Friday, there was already a change.org petition called “Charge Tony Marcuzzo with an attempt for murder.” As of Monday morning, the petition had 10,335 signatures.

This man

Posted to Twitter by E. Parkway McDonald’s

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Trump’s Reality Show and Other Matters

CREDIT: cnn.com

Did it actually happen, or did I just imagine it?

In my uneasy dream, Jerry Lewis — not the Last Man Standing, the roots artist with Lee as his middle name, but the late movie comic, the rubber-faced man of exaggerated whines and pratfalls — is at the Oval Office desk and seems to be in charge. I have no idea what this means, but it begins to make me feel strangely hopeful. Perhaps this is because I am still close enough to wakefulness to know that I am dreaming and to remember the reality of which showman it is who actually is the President.

And, as a I mull this over, I realize that I have fully awakened and am, in a strict sense, thinking, not dreaming any longer. And what I am thinking is summed up in the words “martial law.” And that is no joke. It is what Donald Trump had announced is in our future, courtesy of the 1807 “Insurrection Act,” and it is what we had gotten a strong precursory whiff of Monday evening when the president organized a massive clearing out of a harmless crowd demonstrating at a dutifully safe remove in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.

Suddenly there were roaring motors, tear gas. Flash-bangs, rubber bullets, rampaging horsemen, and ranks of armed men advancing in as no-nonsense a way as you could imagine. Masses of bodies flying, fleeing, flung out of the way. All so the president, well known to be a man of no religion, could walk across the cleared space and hold up a prop Bible in front of a nearby church.

Where is Jerry Lewis when you need him? Or Jerry Lee, for that matter? Or anyone, anyone at all, living or dead, real or imaginary, who can offset this very real vision of soulless monomania, of pointless presumption, writ large?

Meanwhile, the coronavirus is still with us, with its ever-rising death toll and capacity to spike back into an uncontrollable health threat, especially when the tide of public anger has effectively abolished the concept of safe social distancing, which was already in rapid decline, on the streets of every major American city.

cnn.com

George Floyd

Here’s a thought: George Floyd. That’s a name that needs to be remembered for any number of reasons. In the first place, obviously, because of his horrific and needless murder by a white police officer, seen everywhere because everything is seen everywhere in this age of social media. As Rilke said in a great anticipatory poem, “For there is nothing that does not see you/You must change your life.”

Now consider what Floyd had done: He apparently tried to pass off a piece of amateurishly counterfeited paper as a $20 bill for some desired item at a sundry store. Which of us, in this age of an evaporating economy, might not at least fantasize performing such an act, although at a more substantial level for more substantial goods?

And consider the other racial homicide that had already outraged civilized opinion and frayed the historically heroic patience of African Americans — the assassination in Georgia by a trio of self-appointed vigilantes of the black jogger Ahmaud Arbery. And his crime? The only thing that has come to light is that he wandered onto a construction site and looked around for a minute or two.

Now, with those two horrors in mind, along with the ongoing urban disorders in progress from coast to coast, reflect on the fact of a piece of priority legislation before the newly reconvened Tennessee legislature — a bill, favored by our Governor Bill Lee, to allow the open carry of firearms in Tennessee without need of permit. Just what we need to cool tempers and restore peace and harmony, right?

Opposed by every law enforcement institution in the state, it’s already passed Judiciary and is advancing in the state House to the Finance, Ways and Means committee on Wednesday of this week. Something to look forward to.

Also scheduled for Wednesday, closer to home. The Shelby County Commission will make yet another attempt, in its third consecutive special called meeting, to reach agreement on a budget for fiscal 2021-22. In two previous orgies of number-crunching, Mayor Lee Harris and the county’s chief legislative body haven’t come close to agreeing.

Cheer up. For better or for worse, things do get done on Wednesdays. Or, at least, this week they’ll have a chance to. Also scheduled for possible resolution this Wednesday are two suits on behalf of expanding absentee ballot opportunities for this year’s elections, one from the local group Up the Vote 901, another from the ACLU. Those suits will be heard in Chancery Court in Nashville.

And on Thursday, in yet another suit — this one seeking release of prisoners afflicted by or vulnerable to COVID-19 — the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department has the opportunity to file its defense brief before presiding federal Judge Sheryl Lipman.

We’ll try to keep you posted on the outcomes in these matters, at memphisflyer.com. Meanwhile, do your best to stay awake — and in good health.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Down the Rabbit Hole

Earlier this week, a stripper asked on Twitter if people thought it was safe for her to go back to work. The general consensus was, “Sure, as long as you wear a mask and gloves.” There’s a visual for you. You’re welcome.

We seem to be finding new levels of absurdity every day. We’re living in a cartoonish bizarro world that none of us would have recognized — or could have predicted — four years ago. Events and actions that would have dominated the news cycle for weeks are big news one day and forgotten the next. The overload is taking a toll. COVID-19 is killing thousands of Americans, and instead of pulling together, we’re all fighting each other about how to deal with the situation. Everything is tribal.

On Fox News there is a constant stream of rhetoric urging Americans to not be afraid to take risks. “It’s time for all of us to get back to normal. We can’t live in fear,” they urge, hour after hour, show after show. Of course, all of the Fox hosts and guests are broadcasting from their homes, since, apparently, going back to work is mainly for the rest of us. Chin up, America, say the likes of Ingram, Hannity, and Carlson. Masks are for losers and libs! We’ll be here at home, rooting you brave folks (morons) on. Go get ’em, patriots!

Fox has been putting out poisonous blather, propaganda, and misinformation for years, but since President Trump came into office, they’ve taken it to new levels. It’s funny how having as president a shallow, name-calling, lying, tweeting narcissist with no coherent plan — for anything — will enhance that media strategy. We’re all in constant reactive mode to Trump’s pop-goes-the-weasel “management” style. Round and round the mulberry bush we go.

Case in point: On Monday, the president casually mentioned he was taking hydroxychloroquine, which has recently been found to be worthless for treating COVID. This got the news cycle spinning for, oh, a good six hours.

“Will this drug harm the president?” the pundits wondered, since it’s dangerous for folks with underlying conditions such as, well, age and obesity. Or, is it possible that the president was lying (gasp!) about taking the drug, perhaps to divert attention away from other matters — such as the continuing rise in the national death count from COVID, or perhaps the suspicious Friday night firing of the State Department’s inspector general?

So the dividing line for the media — and soon, the rest of us — became: Is the president lying about taking hydroxychloroquine or is the White House physician really letting his most important patient endanger his health by ingesting an ineffective, possibly dangerous drug? A statement released by the president’s doctor was evasive and inconclusive. The president’s press spokesperson would only confirm that “the president said he was taking it.” Duh. That we knew.

So who the hell knows anything anymore? When it comes to the hydroxychloroquine brouhaha, I’m going with “the president is lying” — which is almost always a safe bet.

State Department inspector general Steve Linick was fired Friday night. The initial story was that the IG was looking into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s use of U.S. Secret Service agents to run menial errands for him — picking up food and dry-cleaning and walking the family dog. The agents purportedly referred to themselves as “Uber with guns.”

When asked about the situation, Trump escalated his sensitive and nuanced campaign to win the women’s vote by saying: “I’d rather have [Pompeo] on the phone with some world leader than have him washing dishes because maybe his wife isn’t there.” Smooth.

But it turns out that the actual issue in question probably wasn’t Pompeo’s egregious use of his protection services to pick up the occasional KFC family bucket. The firing came just as Linick was near the completion of an investigation into Pompeo’s approval of a quiet little multibillion-dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia that appeared to end run Congress, and the IG wanted to interview the secretary of state about it.

Oops. Sorry, pal. We can’t have any of that pesky oversight around this administration. Enjoy your retirement. Buh-bye.

Meanwhile, the president continued to push for an investigation of former President Obama for what Trump calls “Obamagate,” which he has been unable to define thus far. We do know it has something to do with twice-confessed felon Michael Flynn, whom Obama warned Trump not to hire because of his sketchy Russian connections. Trump immediately hired Flynn anyway. Now, Trump is saying Obama used Flynn to set him up? Whatever.

It’s all nuts — a cartoon world where strippers wear masks and gloves and Alice in Wonderland logic prevails — and we all appear to be headed down the rabbit hole.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Blue Skies From Now On

Tuesday morning. I’m sitting on the deck, coffee at hand, dogs lying at my feet, alert for squirrel intruders. The sky is as blue as sky is allowed to be. Not a cloud, not a contrail. The trees are fully leafed, green as the first green. Flowers are flushed with color, birds are singing — cardinals, Carolina wrens, white-throated sparrows. The air is clear and sparkling. Spring is … magnificent.

I can’t help but think the reduced number of vehicles roaring around the city and the relative absence of jet planes overhead has given us a glimpse of what the world could be if we cleaned up our act and learned something from the current madness. What if we took climate change seriously? What if we reduced pollution in substantive ways? Not by banning air travel or cars, but by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. What if we learned to let more local goods and services be delivered to our door, instead of driving all over town for them? What if we gained some insight and perspective from this forced downtime we’re all living through?

I inhale deeply, grateful for the ability to do so, when so many are fighting to breathe — grateful I still have a job and a column to write. I say a quiet prayer for the sick and for those working to help them get better — and for those keeping our groceries stocked and our mail delivered and our city safe. I pray for the small businesses struggling to stay afloat. Including the one I work for.

The disease, this COVID-19, it seems far away on this gorgeous morning, but the numbers don’t lie: Around 45,000 people in this country have died; that’s nearly one-quarter of the deaths worldwide. The United States is ground zero, and much of the country hasn’t reached a peak or plateau of cases yet.

Still there is an understandable push to “reopen,” to get the economy back on track. On April 16th, President Trump laid out some guidelines for states to follow in order to restart their economies: “States should have seen a decline in COVID-19 cases for 14 days; reports of symptoms that might represent undiagnosed COVID-19 should have been in decline for the same period; and hospitals should have enough capacity to handle cases without operating in crisis mode and have a ‘robust testing program’ for health care workers.”

The president added that the guidelines “will allow governors to take a phased and deliberate approach to reopening their individual states. Governors will be empowered to tailor an approach that meets the diverse circumstances of their own states,” Trump said. “And some states will be able to open up sooner than others.”

Pretty sensible, actually. Good job, Mr. President.

But no. The very next morning, Trump tweeted out that residents of Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota should “LIBERATE” themselves, and encouraged protests against those states’ governors.

What the hell? Why would the president lay out specific guidelines for states, then encourage people to protest against them the very next day? It’s almost like Trump wants to get people stirred up, like he wants Americans to fight with each other, like he wants chaos and divisiveness. Surely that can’t be true. That’s like something Putin would do.

Or maybe he’s just nuts.

However we got it, there’s plenty of chaos to go around. The stock market is roller-coastering, mostly down. Oil prices have sunk to negative levels. (In a classic “Gift of the Magi” situation, gasoline prices are at rock bottom, but we can’t drive anywhere.) And now, encouraged by the president, bands of protestors, many carrying assault weapons (because the ‘Rona is scared of guns, y’all), are marching and horn-honking and megaphoning — demanding their rights to go get a haircut and eat at Olive Garden and reopen the country — now!

And you and I, my friend, as Southerners, live in the heart of “reopen country.” In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp has decreed that gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, beauty shops and salons, barbershops, body art studios, and more will be able to open this Friday, April 24th, despite that state’s still-surging infection rate.

In Mississippi, Governor Tate Reeves is lifting the stay-at-home decree and opening the state for business on April 27th. Reeves says he believes his state has hit a plateau. (I do not believe that word means what you think it means, Tater.)

And Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has announced that on May 1st, Tennessee businesses can begin to open up, with the exception of counties with their own health department, where the local officials will have jurisdiction. For those of us in Shelby County, that means our timetable for reopening will be controlled by our locally elected leaders. I’m cool with that.

But around the country and around our state, the human Darwinism that’s been ongoing for a few weeks will ramp up to a new level. Some businesses will open; some will open in a limited way; some will remain closed until their owners are convinced their employees and customers are entirely safe and comfortable being around others.

Some people will take the president at his word and LIBERATE themselves from wearing masks and social distancing (if they ever did either) and fearlessly go back to normal, the liberal hoax finally behind them. Others will keep an eye on the local case numbers, the rate of infections, the deaths — and the calendar — and will model their behavior accordingly.

Count me in the latter group.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

“Your Money or Your Life”

I’m writing this on Tuesday, the day Mayor Strickland’s “shelter in place” edict goes into effect. It’s the city’s latest step in trying to “flatten the curve” of the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Shelter in place means, basically, that we all stay home, or at least avoid other people as much as possible. And if we encounter others, we should keep a six-foot distance. You can take walks or jog, you can work in your yard, you can pick up that guitar that’s been moldering in a case for four years. You name it, homeboy. And you can read this week’s cover story for all kinds of good ideas on how to pass the time creatively while ensconced in your domicile.

If you do have to go out to a store or to other public venues, it’s a good idea to wear a mask, at least it is according to the information I just got from physician and city councilman Jeff Warren. Warren asked me to tell Flyer readers that if you’re in a high-risk group (a senior or with underlying health issues), if you have a fever or “vague symptoms with an unclear cause,” or if you’ve been exposed to anyone with fever or symptoms, wear a mask of some sort when you go into a public space. Warren said even a bandana or scarf can help reduce exposure to others. So be advised. It sure can’t hurt.

Meanwhile, during his daily press conference — performance art? — on Monday evening, President Trump made it clear that he wanted to end public measures to curtail the spread of COVID-19 as soon as April 12th — Easter — in order to revive the tanking economy. This flies in the face of all legitimate medical thinking and all evidence from other countries who’ve been dealing with this disease.

But we shouldn’t be surprised, really. It’s just the latest version of the ongoing political sideshow called “science versus ideology.” This variation could also be called “your money or your life,” in which the GOP tries to come up with the ROI for the number of Americans we’re willing to sacrifice in order to fix the stock market. Republican governors in Mississippi, Texas, and Florida, to name three, have all declined to take any significant steps to reduce the public’s exposure. The GOP is betting your life (or your grandmother’s or your diabetic sister’s) on Trump’s belief that COVID-19 will magically disappear by Easter, despite overwhelming evidence from around the globe that it’s just getting started. Farewell, Dr. Fauci. We hardly knew ye.

On that note, I’ve got some updates from the control tower here at the Flyer. If you’re reading this in the print version, you’ll notice the paper is thinner than usual — 24 pages. That’s because the calendar and After Dark events and music listings are gone, as are the advertisers who support them — and us. There’s no getting around it — like most small businesses right now, the Flyer is taking a huge financial hit.

We are working to adjust a decades-old business model at breakneck speed. This week, because of the many closed businesses, community centers, libraries, etc., we printed a substantially smaller number of papers. We’re out there, but we’re harder to find. Like paper towels. In the interim, I suggest you join us at memphisflyer.com on a regular basis. We post and update numerous stories throughout the day. And every Wednesday we publish an ISSUU version of the print paper that replicates exactly what you see in print, including the ads (which you can click on).

As of this writing, we are still determining what makes sense going forward. Options include migrating to digital-only for a while, printing every other week, and/or continuing to print a lesser number of papers each week. We’ll keep you informed, regardless of what we decide.

Meanwhile, please consider clicking the Frequent Flyer link (Support Us) on our website and joining the hundreds of Memphians who support us with a modest monthly contribution, or who have chosen to make one-time contributions. We welcome whatever support you are able to provide. Also on our website, you can sign up for our newsletters. And please follow us on Twitter, IG, and Facebook. We want to stay in touch.

Finally, our thanks to everyone who has stepped up to support the Flyer financially in recent days. We’re humbled by and grateful for your generous response. We’ll do everything in our power to continue sharing news, information, and opinions with you — now and after we all emerge from these difficult times.