Joe Biden, national news

Comforters in chief weigh in

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are getting a crash course in the unspecified role the leaders of our nation must play … and it is coming in a major hurry.

Eight people died in a mass shooting in Atlanta this week. Six of the victims were Asian-Americans; the massacre occurred in three Asian-owned businesses. Police arrested a suspect, who told the cops he wasn’t driven by race, but instead by some sort of “sex addiction.”

Biden and Harris ventured quickly to Atlanta to offer words of comfort and they vowed to pursue justice heavily and with full force.

We now have an attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has hands-on experience dealing with domestic terrorism, having led an investigation into the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

None of us should wish any more of these calls to duty for the POTUS and VPOTUS. However, should the calls come — and they most certainly will — I believe we can be assured that President Biden and Vice President Harris will be up to the task.

Joe Biden possesses a remarkable well-spring of empathy that comes from his own intensely personal loss — of his first wife and infant daughter and of his adult son. Kamala Harris is the first person of Asian descent to serve as VP, so she feels the pain being inflicted on other Asian-Americans by nimrods who blame them for a virus that just so happened to have been discovered in China.

They are the comforters in chief. I am heartened that the know how to perform the role that has been thrust upon them.

national news

Here comes the POTUS ‘meme’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Wait for it, everyone.

President Biden was running up the stairs to step aboard Air Force One when he stumbled a bit. Then he did it twice more.

Did the president fall on his face? Did he topple onto the steps? No. He didn’t. He got up. Walked the rest of the way. Stood for a moment at the door and snapped a salute to the military honor guard that awaited him. Then he walked into the massive jet and flew off to Atlanta, where he offered words of comfort and support to a community shaken by the massacre that killed eight people.

What, then, awaits us? It’ll be the endless string of social media memes that poke fun at the president.

Hey, I am commenting on it with this blog post, which I suppose tells you that it kind of interests me, too.

I just don’t want to see President Biden lampooned the way, uh, President Ford was many decades ago because he took a nasty fall while descending the steps of Air Force One.

It’s yet another sign of the times. Mr. President, get used to it.

national news

Where is condemnation from No. 45?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You don’t need to answer the question posed in the headline atop this brief blog post.

It’s a rhetorical query, given that I don’t really expect Donald Trump to say a word about the shooting in suburban Atlanta, Ga., that left eight people dead, six of whom were Asian-Americans.

Our national debate over race relations and racism has turned toward the Asian-American community, which has been demonized and vilified partly because of the rhetoric that came from Trump as the COVID virus began to spread across the nation and around the world. It began in China, and Trump — even today, after he has left office — continues to call it the “China virus.”

Chip Roy rebuked for lynching remark at hearing on Asian American discrimination | The Texas Tribune

If the ex-president had a shred of decency he would issue a statement of condemnation against the attacks against Asian-Americans and certainly against the massacre that occurred at three Asian-American owned businesses.

Is there a link between Trump’s angry rhetoric and the violence against Asian-Americans that appears to be occurring in communities across the land? It looks like it to me. Whether we ever hear from the ex-president of the United States remains as unlikely as ever.

What a shame.

national news

He won’t run again?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Under normal circumstances, I might not place too much stock in what a university professor predicts for our nation’s political future.

Then again, any prediction involving Donald John Trump ought to get our attention. It gets mine for sure.

Allan Lichtman has predicted the winner of every presidential election seemingly since The Flood. He now says that Trump won’t run for the Republican Party presidential nomination nor will he run as a third-party candidate in 2024. He also says President Biden likely will run for re-election next time despite the fact that he will be 82 years of age were he to take office for a second term.

Lichtman is an American University political historian. He said Trump would win in 2016 despite every pundits’ prediction that Hillary Clinton would win in a breeze. Then the bottom fell out of Trump’s term and Biden won handily, which Lichtman saw coming as well.

As for the ex-president’s future, Lichtman doesn’t see it bearing much political fruit. And as for Biden’s future, that remains to be seen as well, given all that can go wrong between now and, say, the end of the 2022 midterm election.

Still, I am going to cling to the hope that Professor Lichtman’s prognostication skills hold up and that Trump really and truly is gone forever from the nation’s political scene.

Trump well might be indicted for campaign finance fraud and for coercing Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn a statewide election that went to Joe Biden in 2020.

As the Miami Herald reports: Worse for Trump is that, “He’s got $400 million-plus in loans coming due. His brand is failing. His businesses are failing. He has a huge IRS audit. He doesn’t hold office anymore. He’s lost his Twitter feed,” Lichtman told me. That’s a lot of baggage for somebody to run for president, he added.

Professor who’s predicted presidential winners since ’80s says Trump won’t be a candidate in 2024. He’s probably right | Opinion (yahoo.com)

Here’s hoping Trump’s fortunes continue to crater.

State news

Why does he anger me?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What in the world is it about Ted Cruz that makes my blood boil?

It cannot possibly be just that he is a conservative Republican. Or that he has this annoying  way of pretending to speak for millions of Texas residents he represents in the U.S. Senate. Or that he landed in the U.S. Senate and began pi**ing off his colleagues, even his fellow Republicans.

I cannot quite dial it in.

It might go back to when he first ran for the Senate in 2012. His GOP opponent that year was Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who was favored heavily to win the party nomination and then get elected to the Senate. He didn’t. He lost the primary to Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general. I actually like Dewhurst; I enjoyed my relationship with him while I worked as editorial page editor of the Globe-News in Amarillo. Dewhurst was the hardest-working politician in Austin. He was so detail oriented that if you asked him for the time, he might be inclined to tell you how to build a watch … you know?

Losing to Cruz, though, only magnified the emptiness of the state GOP, although I’ll acknowledge that Dewhurst proved to be a lousy campaigner.

Cruz then landed in the Senate and began pi**ing off his GOP colleagues, such as the late John McCain, who scolded Cruz for challenging the patriotism of Vietnam War vets John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, two of McCain’s friends and fellow Vietnam vets.

His Senate career has been a series of showmanship tactics. His ambition is so bodacious that he just doesn’t wear it well.

Now he is putting holds on nominations put forth by President Biden. He has pulled them, allowing the nominees to go forward toward confirmation.

Ted Cruz releases holds on Biden nominees as administration looks to get tough on Russia pipeline – POLITICO

I’ll admit to not knowing Cruz. I have never met the man. I might think differently of him were I to shake his hand and engage in some chatter, but I haven’t. Therefore, I am left to hold these views of him.

I’ll just continue to loathe his presence in the media and when he screams “Freedom!” at conservative political rallies. I won’t apologize for those feelings.

medical news, science news

Senator fuels peeve list

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(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My list of pet peeves is lengthy.

It includes watching a politician lecture an expert on matters the expert knows far better than the lecturing politician.

My latest example of that occurred Thursday when U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, patronized Dr. Anthony Fauci over the value of wearing masks as a weapon to use against the killer coronavirus.

To be totally fair, I should stipulate that Sen. Paul is an MD. He is an ophthalmologist, so he isn’t a layman the way I am a layman. However, to listen to Sen./Dr. Paul lecture Dr. Fauci during a Senate committee hearing about whether mask wearing actually combats the virus makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I guess I should declare once more that Fauci is the world’s pre-eminent infectious disease expert. He is The Man, the go-to guy, the doc who has served seven U.S. presidents from both political parties.

Fauci said categorically that wearing a mask is effective in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus, along with social distancing, frequent hand-washing and other measures.

Rand Paul persisted in trying to make whatever political point he wanted to make at Fauci’s expense. Dr. Fauci wasn’t having any of it.

I was delighted to hear Dr. Fauci push back hard against the know-it-all U.S. senator.

DC riot

GOP lawmakers shame themselves

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Twelve members of the U.S. House of Representatives should be ashamed of themselves.

These individuals, all Republicans, voted “no” on a resolution granting the Congressional Gold Medal to the Capitol Police officers who fought to protect Congress from a mob of terrorists who stormed the Capitol Building on the Sixth of January.

These lawmakers reportedly objected to language contained in the resolution that referred to the “insurrection” that occurred on that horrible day.

What? That is precisely what the nation and the world witnessed. The mob was provoked by Donald Trump to do precisely what it did do. If what we saw wasn’t an insurrection,  then there is no active definition of the word.

Indeed, 12 lawmakers allowed there to be a bipartisan vote to award the gallant police officers — one of whom died in the melee — the Congressional Gold Medal. The stellar demonstration of bipartisanship is to be saluted.

However, the idiotic refusal of those dozen GOP legislators — and they include Rep. Louie Gohmert of Tyler, Texas — deserves our national scorn.

The resolution will go to the Senate for its expected approval. Let’s just wait to see who among the members of that chamber follows the moronic path being blazed by their House colleagues.

local news

Looking for ‘lost words’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I’m not sure where to go with this post, but I’ll start by resurrecting a Facebook statement I made in 2016.

It goes like this: I’m now considering a campaign to resurrect words we never hear any longer. My first potential candidate is “fink.” Dear ol’ Dad used to call people “fink” all the time.

I am open to suggestions.

The word “fink” suits me fine. Dad referred to individuals as “fink” when he thought little of them. A derivative of “fink” is “rat fink,” you know, the individual who tattles on others. We don’t hear that one, either, these days.

Does anyone ever say “swell” any more when talking about a condition they think is just, oh, swell? How about when we want someone to leave our presence? We used to say “scram!” We replaced that with “beat it,” but that term now has a sort of, um, double entendre … you know what I mean?

Twenty-first century language bears little resemblance in many ways to what some of us older folks grew up learning.

Hey, I have just a few idle moments to share this missive with you.

Again, if you have any more ideas for words that could be revived, I am open to hearing them. Let’s share. OK?

national news

Oops! It’s a ‘crisis’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Jen Psaki didn’t mean to use the word “crisis” when describing what is occurring along our nation’s southern border.

The White House press secretary tried immediately to walk back that term, referring to it during her daily briefing as a “challenge.”

Well, actually it is a crisis. I don’t begrudge the White House press flack for calling it what it is. Those unaccompanied youngsters need our nation’s attention when they cross our border. Their numbers are at 20-year highs. I think I would call it a crisis.

Now, is it a crisis that cannot be repaired? Of course it can! It is possible for the Biden administration to get its arms around the problem. I want the immigration team to get busy crafting a solution.

White House press secretary slips up, calls border migrant surge a ‘crisis’ (msn.com)

I just chuckle and wince at the same time when government officials and their spokespeople get hung on using precise terminology.

I know what she said. I also know what is occurring. There shouldn’t be any need to grammar-check the White House press spokeswoman.

crime news

Much worse than a ‘bad day’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s see how we should process this.

A lunatic walks into a massage parlor and shoots four people to death. He leaves that site, drives to another such location and kills four more individuals.

Six of the eight victims are of Asian descent. The suspect, who I won’t name in this blog, is arrested and tells the cops he wasn’t acting out of hate for Asian-Americans or against women. He blames it on having some sort of “sex addiction.”

Then up steps a senior officer with the the Cherokee County (Ga.) sheriff’s office to say the shooter was having a “bad day.”

Oh, no. When most reasonable folks are having a “bad day,” they might swill some booze, or perhaps gorge on some comfort food, or maybe argue with their spouse.

Do they shoot people to death? Do they commit one crime, then drive to another location and do some more of it? Good grief!

Sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker has since apologized for his remarks. Boy, howdy … he needs to say he’s sorry over and over. It’s a bit complicated, though, because Baker reportedly sported an anti-Asian t-shirt in a Facebook post.

Gulp! According to NBC News: “There are simply no words to describe the degree of human suffering experienced on Tuesday … in our community and in Atlanta,” Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said in a statement Thursday.

“I have known and served with Captain Baker for many years. His personal ties to the Asian community and his unwavering support and commitment to the citizens of Cherokee County are well known to many. Oh behalf of the dedicated women and men of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office we regret any heartache Captain Baker’s words may have caused.”

Sheriff’s officials ‘regret any heartache’ for ‘bad day’ comment after Georgia spa killings (msn.com)

Yes, Baker’s words caused “heartache.” They also seem to reveal a stunning lack of revulsion over the results of a horrible act.

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