national news

GOP continues to cower

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Listen up, America.

Have we just witnessed a precursor to the verdict we can expect from the U.S. Senate that is putting Donald Trump on trial after his second impeachment by the House of Representatives?

I am afraid so. The Senate voted today to narrowly defeat a GOP measure to dismiss the trial on grounds that it isn’t constitutional. Five Senate Republicans joined Democrats in moving ahead. The vote was 55-45. The GOP senators with guts are: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Pat Toomey and Ben Sasse.

The rest of ’em? All cowards. They are cowering under threat of reprisal by the Trump cultists in their home state who will go after them at the next election.

They contend that the Constitution calls for impeachment to remove a president. Donald Trump already is gone, they say, so the trial is irrelevant and is unconstitutional.

Oh, my. Forty-five out of 50 Senate Republicans want to give a pass to a president who fomented a riotous mob into violence on the Sixth of January. What in the world is wrong with these idiots, er … individuals?

The terrorists captured the very floor of the Senate, where our lawmakers do their jobs. They threatened to kill then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, only God knows who else might have been killed or wounded in action had the rioters had gotten their hands on them.

None of that is sufficient to persuade most GOP senators to proceed with a trial that should occur, if only at this point to keep Donald Trump out of the political scene … for the rest of his miserable life.

Stay tuned, folks. It looks to me as though a Senate trial conviction is slipping away.

medical news

Biden moves quickly on pandemic fight

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden is wasting no time proving he means what he says about pulling out all the stops in fighting the killer pandemic.

The president today ordered 200 million more doses of the vaccine that is expected to help eradicate the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

This, dear friends, is music to my pointy ears.

Now, a bit of full disclosure.

A very close and dear member of my family has just been released from the hospital, where she spent four weeks, most of the time hooked up to a respirator. She now is resting at home with her husband and her golden Labrador retriever.

This is my way of telling you that this disease cuts me close to the quick and I am not going to relent one iota in following the recommended measures to maintain my own health, along with the health of our beloved family members.

President Biden said during his inaugural speech that we should wear masks and do all the things we need to do out of love for our country. I love my country, Mr. President! I hear you, sir!

I also want you to ensure the nation that you do not let up — not at all, not one bit! — in maintaining our national resolve to rid us all of this killer virus.

The death count passed the “horrific” status long ago. It is climbing as I write these words. It came too damn close to claiming someone who is very special to me.

Two hundred million more doses on the way? Yes! Bring more … many more!

Uncategorized

Get rid of this nut job!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

By all means, a first-term congresswoman from Georgia needs to go. She needs either to resign or the House can kick her sorry backside out of the place.

Then, too, there’s always impeachment.

Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene comes from the school of idiots who believe in the conspiracy theories that everyone with half a brain dismiss.

Pressure Mounts for Congresswoman to Resign for Endorsing False Claims School Shootings Were Staged (msn.com)

Calls are mounting for her to resign because she has put out the phony notion that the Sandy Hook grade school massacre in 2012 and the high school shooting in Florida were hoaxes. Yes, she’s a believer in that moronic QAnon conspiracy club.

She needs to get her a** out of the People’s House and she has no business signing her name onto laws that affect those of us who live far away from her Georgia congressional district.

Georgia voters, you had the good sense to elect two solid Democrats to the Senate this year. Show that the sensibility carries over to how you can dispose of the idiot Greene’s political career.

 

national news

Follow the evidence, senators

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s defense in his second impeachment trial is beginning to take shape.

It will not center on the high crime for which the House of Representatives impeached him. What he did was visible on TV screens around the world: He incited the terrorists to storm Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January and seek to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election that determine Joe Biden the winner.

Instead, the former president’s defense will hinge on some constitutional language that suggests that the House acted beyond the scope of its power by impeaching a man who no longer would be serving in the office of president.

Except for this little item: Trump was president when the House impeached him on Jan. 13. He left the office a week after that. The Senate is trying him now to prevent him from seeking public office ever again.

As I ponder this event, which begins on Feb. 9, I am left to wonder whether a second acquittal for Donald Trump will be on a technicality. You know, the kind of verdict that hardline prosecutors detest when they lose cases in which they present incontrovertible evidence, only to see it swept aside because of some technical matter.

You can bet your final dollar that the House managers who present their case will rely solely on the evidence that everyone saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. Think as well about the fact that senators will be hearing this evidence in the very scene of the crime that the rioters committed … at Donald Trump’s behest.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the single count leveled against Trump to the Senate. The House managers have a steep hill to climb if they hope to persuade 17 GOP senators to do the right thing and vote to convict Trump.

However, as we have seen with all too much maddening regularity, congressional Republicans too often exhibit cowardice when faced with political repercussions. Donald Trump is now a cult leader in exile … but the cultists who follow him remain committed to him far more than to the country they profess to love.

Uncategorized

Surviving these trying times

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

To suggest we have been living in trying times is to commit the Mother of Understatements.

We have just said good riddance to someone who in my humble view is without question the most incompetent, imbecilic, venal and vile man ever to occupy the office of president of the United States. You know to whom I refer, so I won’t bother mentioning his name.

We also have this pandemic that continues to kill an alarming number of Americans every day.

It is fair to ponder how we get through this time, through all these crises. I do so practically daily.

My hope is for strength and for patience. Our new president, Joe Biden, is a decent man, in many ways the antithesis of the individual he replaced in the White House. He is enacting policy changes at a blinding pace as he settles in behind the Resolute Desk.

The first order of business is to get rid of the pandemic. President Biden has declared that he is establishing a “war footing” as he fights the virus; he will enact the Defense Production Act to mobilize all available federal resources to the fight against what his predecessor called an “unseen enemy.”

I await the results to bear real and tangible benefit. It will take time. We must not fool ourselves into believing a quick solution is just around the corner.

The Senate trial will be over and behind us likely soon after it begins. Do not expect a conviction of the former president who incited the insurrection on the Sixth of January. If it happens, you will find no one more excited than me; if it doesn’t, well, we will know the names of the Senate cowards who couldn’t put loyalty to the Constitution above their loyalty to an individual.

As we fend off the temptation to assess blame, though, let us give ample thanks to the system ingrained in our government by the wise men who built it in the late 18th century. It is far from perfect, but we knew that to be the case. Our system remains the best hope for the world to emulate.

The difficult era through which we have just passed likely won’t fade soon into our distant memory. How do I know that? Because I continue to write about it on this blog and I am not alone in spending emotional energy on the bygone era.

It will fade eventually. I long for the day when we can look exclusively forward without pondering the hell through which we all traveled.

national news

Trump wants to form new party? Perfect!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This bit of news almost made me laugh out loud, as in guffaw uproariously.

Donald Trump, having disgraced the respectable elements of the Republican Party, might decide to form his own political organization if he wants to run for president in 2024.

A good bit of that remains in the hands of the U.S. Senate, which could bar him from running for office ever again if it finds the backbone it needs to convict him of incitement of insurrection. The House of Reps impeached Trump for the second time after he egged on the terrorists, encouraging them to storm Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January.

It is my fondest hope that Trump has deep-fried his political goose within the GOP no matter what the Senate decides. From my vantage in Trump Country, a Senate conviction remains a tall order. The U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict a president; that means the Senate needs to contain 17 GOP members with courage and a deep and abiding love of the government they took an oath to protect.

Is there a self-respecting non-Trump cultist Republican who believes the ex-president is suited to lead a once-great political party? Hell no, man!

So, sure thing, Mr. Trump. Form your political party. All he has to do is put a name on what exists already. Call it the Trump Party. It’s in keeping with Trump’s love affair with his own name. He plasters it on casinos, airplanes, hotels, a university, steak sauce. His party exists in reality as it is, breaking away from traditional Republicanism to create what he calls a “movement” aimed at “making America great again.”

Hey, there’s another name for it. The MAGA Party! It could be linked forever with Donald Trump, the guy who brought us death and misery by failing to act against a killer virus and whose astonishing ineptitude resulted in a collapsed economy.

If I were a Democratic Party activist, I would be exhorting Trump to go ahead and make my day.

local news

This guy is now in Congress … wow!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

It is difficult for me to process the election of a guy who represents the congressional district where I once lived, given this individual’s history and the idiotic nature of the campaign he ran to win the seat in the House of Representatives.

U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson is now representing the 13th Congressional District, succeeding longtime Rep. Mac Thornberry of Clarendon, who retired at the end of 2020.

Jackson came to the Texas Panhandle after serving in the Navy. He achieved the rank of rear admiral. He is a physician and served as the doc for three presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

He was born in Levelland, but moved away to follow his military career. He must have excelled, given the high rank he achieved, so I do not begrudge him his accomplishments.

Then he became enamored with the Trump effort to “make America great again.” He became a MAGA-ite. Trump nominated him to become secretary of veterans affairs, which on the surface seemed like a good call.

But … wait! Then came allegations of some hanky panky by the doctor. Trump nominated Jackson to be his secretary of veterans affairs. Jackson eventually withdrew his nomination after allegations surfaced about drinking on the job and overprescribing of medication to patients.

All of that was well-known as he settled in the Panhandle to launch his first-ever political campaign.

Still, despite all that the voters of the region — which cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Trump in his losing race against President Biden — went with this fellow, Dr. Jackson.

I do not get it!

Whether he learns anything about the issues vital to those he represents remains to be seen. I hope for his constituents’ sake he does, that he bones up on farm policy, on water policy, on wind and solar energy issues, on national security … and on what’s on folks’ minds at the grange hall, the feed store and in church.

I don’t feel good yet about the quality of representation my friends and former neighbors are about to receive.

I want to be wrong. Time will have to tell me whether I am.

Uncategorized

The Big Lie lives on

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Congressional Republicans continue to cling to The Big Lie … and it’s infuriating as hell.

One of them, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, told ABC News that Congress has a responsibility to track down every known instance of voter fraud it can find relating to the 2020 presidential election. When he was told that there is no evidence of widespread fraud, Paul insisted on following that lie down the ol’ rabbit hole.

“There are two sides to every story,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. Except there isn’t another “side” to the lie fomented by Donald Trump, his acolytes in Congress and out here in Voter Land.

Then came Paul’s effort to defend his integrity by claiming that Stephanopoulos was calling him a liar. He wasn’t. Stephanopoulos said only that Paul and other GOP Trump cultists in the Senate have swallowed The Big Lie.

Let’s revisit what we know, OK?

Courts have ruled that there is no evidence of widespread fraud. President Biden won the election freely, fairly and without fraud. Every single state in the Union certified the results. The former Attorney General William Barr said there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that would determine the outcome of the election.

I get that no election is utterly and completely fraud-free. Every election since the founding of our republic has produced isolated incidents – a voter or two here and/or there – of people casting ballots illegally. Is that satisfactory? Of course not! It did not approach the level of “widespread fraud” that Trump alleged for the entire post-election period leading up to President Biden’s inauguration.

The Big Lie resulted in the terrorist attack on Capitol Hill and the second presidential impeachment of Donald Trump. It put members of Congress – including Sen. Paul – in dire danger of physical harm … or worse!

So, for the Trumpsters who remain in public office to continue to base their search for voter fraud on a lie – which they surely must know to be a lie – is the height (or depth) of hypocrisy.

medical news

Call it a ‘false positive’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s a form of “false positive” news about the pandemic.

What we hear this morning is that infection/hospitalization rates are leveling off, that they now are at pre-Thanksgiving levels. Is that good news? Sure it is. At least for today it is.

What’s more, we hear about vaccination rates accelerating. Twenty million Americans have received at least the first dose of vaccine. That, too, is encouraging.

Tomorrow is another day. Next week is another week. Which means that we intend to continue doing what we need to do to stay healthy.

It’s good to remind everyone that this kind of false positive news is no signal to let up, no time to back off.

I take only a small measure of relief to hear the news about infection and hospitalization rates. We are keeping our masks within arm’s reach at all times.

media news, national news

No angry tweets … sweet!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to stand with David Plouffe, one of America’s most brilliant political strategists.

He wrote this message on Twitter: Will take a while to get used to waking up on a weekend and not be bombarded with a dozens of mean, crazy and destructive tweets from the world’s most powerful person. But I like the feeling so far.

I like the feeling, too. I like not having my Twitter feed flooded with posts from an angry president of the United States. I like reading about how senior presidential administration officials are learning they are being fired, or are learning about critical policy decisions, or are having to fend off criticism from the commander in chief.

The silence is golden.

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