entertainment news

Gov. Jenner? Ugghhh!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

So help me I don’t know why I am even taking time to offer a comment on this … but here goes.

Caitlynn Jenner — formerly known around the world as Bruce Jenner — is running for governor of California. Caitlynn Jenner wants to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s the target of a recall election.

What in the world does Caitlynn bring to this contest, other than astonishing celebrity status as a reality TV personality back when she was Bruce?

Caitlynn Jenner has done two notable things since winning the Olympic decathlon gold medal in Montreal in 1976:

She married the mother of those Kardashian girls. Then she changed her gender from male to female. That’s it, and that is all I intend to say about this. Unless, of course, Californians are crazy enough to actually elect this person as governor.

Eek!

Joe Biden

Who will cheer this POTUS?

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Presidential speeches to joint congressional sessions have devolved over many years into partisan events.

Presidents of one party stand before senators and House members and deliver lines designed to draw applause. The way it usually plays out is that lawmakers from the president’s party stand and cheer while those on the other side of the room sit silently while their “friends” offer the cheers.

So that will be the backdrop next week as President Biden strides to the podium to tell Congress about his big plans to help the nation continue to recover medically and economically from the pandemic that has ravaged us.

Joe Biden has trumpeted himself as being a politician with plenty of friends on the other side of the room. He is a Democrat who has worked well — in the past — with Republicans in the Senate, where he served for 36 years before becoming vice president in 2009. Why, he’s even drawn high praise from his GOP colleagues over those many years.

They aren’t about to praise him now. The mood is markedly different these days from the time in 1973 when Biden first joined the Senate. There’s a whole lot of snarling taking place these days.

He’ll have a Democratic House speaker sitting behind him at the joint session, along with the vice president, Kamala Harris. We’ll get to watch them cheer the president’s remarks.

My curiosity will be piqued, though, when President Biden enters the room as the sergeant at arms announces his arrival. Will congressional Republicans have enough good manners about them to stand and cheer when our head of state enters? Or will they continue to exhibit their petulance over losing the 2020 presidential election?

I am willing to acknowledge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at times bristled openly at Donald Trump’s remarks and behavior during his speeches to Congress. Her anger manifested itself spectacularly when she stood and tore up the text of Trump’s speech to pieces in front of the whole world.

If only we could expect better behavior this time around.

legal news

What will AG find?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My curiosity is killing me.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced a Justice Department investigation into the Minneapolis, Minn., police practices. Garland wants to get to the bottom of policies that resulted in George Floyd’s death a year ago when former cop Derek Chauvin suffocated him while arresting Floyd on a charge of passing counterfeit currency.

I am left to wonder: Why?

Police Chief Medaria Arradondo testified during Chauvin’s trial that what he did was not in keeping with the PD’s policy. He said that Chauvin violated the police department’s policy and standard when he pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.

So what is the AG intending to determine?

I happen to support Merrick Garland’s position as the nation’s top law enforcement official. I supported President Biden’s decision to nominate him to be the next AG.

I just am wondering out loud whether this investigation is as much for show as it is for actually finding policies that routinely result in the ghastly event that the whole world witnessed on that Minneapolis street.

Is there systemic racism within the PD? Is the department training its officers adequately?

I hope the attorney general’s probe produces legitimate findings.

Joe Biden

Biden keeps going big

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(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden isn’t wasting a moment of time in pushing hard for an agenda he hopes will transform the nation and perhaps the world.

I welcome the president’s intensity.

He went hard in declaring his intention to get 100 million COVID vaccines into Americans during his first 100 days in office. He has doubled that goal by getting 200 million vaccines injected … and the 100 days isn’t even here yet.

Biden pushed for a COVID relief bill that has helped millions of American affected by the pandemic. The Democratic Party majority in Congress listened and got it done.

Now he is imploring other world leaders to join the United States in battling climate change. Biden took part in a virtual summit of heads of government and state and declared his intention for the United States to cut its carbon emissions in half by the end of this decade. President Biden said, in effect, it’s now or never for the world to act to combat what he has called the world’s greatest existential threat.

I agree with the guts of Biden’s agenda so far. I  want him to succeed. I also agree that climate change poses the most serious threat to our lives — and not just our way of life.

President Biden is making me proud of our head of state again. Many millions of Americans agonized during the previous four years living in a nation governed by a carnival barker who had no prior government experience before taking the presidential oath of office. His ignorance was on full display damn near daily.

I intend to keep pulling for President Biden as he seeks to go big on all manner of important issues.

Uncategorized

Silence is deafening

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s silence in the aftermath of the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict has been deafening.

Yet I almost can hear what the former president might have told those sitting around him when he got the news along with the rest of the nation. I sense that he believes Chauvin got hosed by the jurors who convicted him of murdering George Floyd on that Minneapolis street a year ago.

You might wonder: Why is this guy (me) even discussing this? Because it was on Donald Trump’s watch for the past four years that this type of crime — with the cops exercising brute force against African-Americans — became so prevalent.

Therefore, it stands to reason to believe that Donald Trump would have something to say publicly about a criminal trial that captured the public’s attention in a way not seen since, oh, the one involving O.J. Simpson in 1995.

But he hasn’t said anything about the verdict.

Barack Obama has spoken out. So has President Biden, as has George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. They all have said essentially the same thing, that the verdict was correct.

Donald Trump’s term was punctuated by a sharp increase in hate crimes against various ethnic and racial groups. Big surprise, eh? Hardly. The man began his campaign for president in 2015 with a full frontal attack on Mexican immigrants who he said were “rapists, murderers” and drug dealers seeking to enter the United States illegally for the expressed purpose of committing crimes against Americans. It went straight into the crapper from that point.

He failed to address the issue of crimes against minorities. He looked the other way when hate against them erupted into violent crime. The result was the emboldening of Americans who knew that Trump had their back.

Trump is now gone. He likely never will return to the White House that he defiled during his time in office. Trump’s silence on the Derek Chauvin trial and on the death of an American under the knee of a rogue cop speaks loudly enough for me to understand the gravity of the mistake this nation made by electing this guy in the first place.

crime news

Anti-Asian hate crimes?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am a bit confused.

The U.S. Senate has just approved, in a stunning 94-1 vote, a bill that makes crimes against Asian-Americans a hate crime.

Now, to be clear I do not condone hate crimes of any form. What confuses me is why Congress feels the need to enact a bill that seeks to protect a single group of Americans.

If crimes are directed at individuals because of hate, isn’t there a way to write an all-inclusive bill that covers all Americans?

Senate passes anti-Asian hate crimes bill | TheHill

Gay Americans are victims of hate crimes. Black Americans are, too. So are Latinos. Muslims have been targeted by criminals who hate them because of their religion. There once was a time when Catholics were hate crime victims. Now it’s Americans of Asian descent.

Do we single out all these groups for specific levels of hate crime or do we wrap them all into a comprehensive piece of legislation that covers hate crimes of all types?

If someone can explain why we have this need to enact bills that target hate crimes against certain categories of Americans, I am all ears.

Oh, the single vote against the Asian-American hate crime bill? None other than Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, the Republican who led the challenge to President Biden’s election in 2020.

environmental news

Earth is even more fragile

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Astronaut Bill Anders pointed his camera out the window of Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968 and captured this never before seen image.

The astronauts aboard the first manned lunar mission then read from the Book of Genesis and wished us good tidings on “the Good Earth.”

This picture is worth looking at once again as the world celebrates Earth Day. Anders, along with crewmates Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, all told us upon their return from deep space that our planet looked so “fragile” to their eyes as it rose from the lunar horizon.

In the more than 52 years since this iconic photo was created, Earth has become even more fragile. Humankind has damaged our “Good Earth” through a number of environmental vices: too much carbon emission and deforestation has destroyed natural habitat and caused the gradual year over year warming of our planet. The effect of that warming, of course, has damaged our polar ice caps and put more of our wildlife in peril.

Bill Anders captured a wondrous moment to share with his fellow human beings. Only these men and those who followed them to the moon can understand fully just how fragile our planet was then and has become.

Our “Good Earth” needs to be strengthened.

State news

One surprise from this session

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If one were to press me for a response to a certain question, I would say that the Texas Legislature’s biggest surprise this session has been the absence of a bathroom bill similar to one that went down in flames in 2017.

For those who might not recall, here’s a brief recap:

The 2017 Legislature considered a bill pushed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that would have required anyone using a public restroom to use the one that comported with their gender at birth. That meant that transgender people could not use restrooms that aligned with their current gender. Yep, transgender men had to use the women’s restroom and vice versa.

Got it? Well, Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session and put the bathroom bill on the call list of issues to ponder.

Then it ran into then-House Speaker Joe Straus’s resistance. Straus said in no way would he allow the bill to advance through the House of Representatives. He declared it discriminated against transgender individuals and had no place in the roster of state laws.

The bill died a deservedly agonizing death.

Given the Legislature’s continued campaign to forge a conservative social agenda, I am surprised that a return of the bathroom bill has failed to materialize.

Straus left the Legislature after the 2017 session. His replacement as speaker, Dennis Bonnen, didn’t bring it back in 2019. Bonnen then left the House and his successor as speaker, Dade Phelan, hasn’t said a word about bringing this bill back.

Which is just fine with me. This goofy notion needed to die. May it stay dead … forever and ever.

environmental news

Hey, it’s Earth Day!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

We celebrate this day every year. We say the right things. We actually try to do the right things.

And yet …

Our precious, precarious planet continues to be threatened by policies and behavior that places it in dire peril. What’s going on?

Earth Day is meant to bring the world’s attention to the only planet on which human beings can inhabit. Why don’t we celebrate this world of ours every single day?

I am not going to suggest that our household is doing anything extraordinary to protect our precious Earth, but we have embraced the notion of recycling with both arms. We hug the notion tightly. We now live in a community where recycling has become something akin to a way of life among the thousands of fellow residents of Princeton, Texas.

That is one small way we do our part to protect our planet.

To be clear, ours isn’t the only North Texas community that allows residents to recycle items. We are surrounded by small towns and mid-sized cities that also provide opportunities for residents to do their part, too. For that I am grateful.

Recycling material reduces the consumption of fossil fuels used to create this stuff from scratch by as much as 40 to 50 percent, as I have understood it over the years. It takes far less finite energy to re-use material than to manufacture it.

I am not going to say that every community’s embrace of recycling is going to save our planet by itself. I do offer the belief that human beings’ involvement in recycling that can contribute to the overall goal of preserving our planet’s resources and in keeping our environment clean enough for humans to continue living here.

Our government has returned to the community of nations’ effort to preserve our planet. President Biden’s executive order to return the United States to the Paris Climate Accord is a good first step. Donald Trump pulled us out of that international agreement, calling it intrusive and an impediment to business. Hmm. Well, many of us disagreed with Trump’s call and are welcoming Joe Biden’s involvement in this critical effort.

We are going to honor our Good Earth today. Schools will dedicate class time to remind our children of the need to take care of the planet. Our public airwaves will have programming aimed at doing the same thing.

Those of us who are able also will do our part by filling up our recycling bins with items that can be re-used and re-purposed with the goal of conserving our nation’s precious resources.

Happy Earth Day! Let’s remain vigilant and attentive to our planet tomorrow, too … and for as long as we all inhabit this place.

political news

It’s a never-ending cycle

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It never ends.

We finish an election cycle and the next one begins. Immediately. There is no cooling off. No respite from the rhetoric. No rest for voters or for those of us who comment on these cycles.

As much as I enjoy being able to offer these comments, I admit that it wears me out.

I am not sure when it began to wear me down and out. Maybe it began with the 2000 election cycle. Or perhaps when social media began to take a firm hold on our attention, providing so much information and pseudo-information. It only has accelerated over the two decades since that time.

We finished the 2020 election cycle, which was a blessed event for those of us who wanted the presidential campaign to end the way it did. But now …

Lo and behold, the 2022 mid-term election campaign has begun. Republicans want to take back Congress from them nasty Democrats before turning their sights on the White House in 2024.

In fact, the 2024 campaign rhetoric already is getting ginned up. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is seeking to obstruct President Biden’s nominees at every turn, offering pointed and wrongheaded criticism of Biden.

Give me a break … will ya?

It’s only going to ratchet up more rapidly as Election Day 2022 approaches and then, by golly, we’d better batten ’em down in preparation for the 2024 election.

Are you ready? I clearly am not! I had better get ready … or else!

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