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Waiting for the pageantry

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am a sucker for pageantry. I love military parades. I love patriotic music. I even get caught up in pomp and circumstance.

It’s especially true when it comes to presidential inaugurations. I guess you’ve heard but we have one of those coming up. It’s fewer than 60 days from today.

President Joe Biden will take office. His wife, Jill, will hold a Bible and Chief Justice John Roberts will instruct the president to recite 35 words contained in the presidential oath.

The pageantry will be immense, even if it’s scaled back. The coronavirus pandemic is likely to inhibit the crowd size that will be gathered before the new president and the former presidents who will be there to witness his moment of pageantry.

The absence of President Biden’s immediate predecessor won’t inhibit the majesty of the moment. I don’t expect to see Donald Trump there, given that he won’t acknowledge that Biden actually beat the stuffing out of him in the Nov. 3 election.

So what if he takes a pass? No big shakes for me, to be honest.

I am going to focus my attention on the new team, led by a new president, who will seek to right the ship of state that has been listing badly for the past four years.

Yes, the lunacy of the campaign, the tragedy of the pandemic, the chaos associated with the transition will do nothing to distract me from the pageantry and majesty that awaits as we welcome a new president and vice president.

I’ll make an admission, too. I am likely to shed a tear or two as Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden receive these words once they take their oaths: “Congratulations, Mme. Vice President” and “Congratulations, Mr. President.”

Yep, the pageantry gets me every time.

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Trump goes out as he came in: amid chaos

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump is going out in a blizzard of incoherence, which to my memory reminds me of how he entered the presidency.

He was willfully ignorant of what it took to take the reins of government. He never learned a thing. Now he’s exiting the White House on Jan. 20 while offering a mysterious string of incoherent rants.

For instance, he said he will leave D.C. “if” the Electoral College certifies that President-elect Biden won the election on Nov 3. Whaddya mean “if,” dude? The Electoral College is going to certify Joe Biden as the winner, and a clear winner at that! His margin of actual vote victory is widening daily, surpassing 6 million ballots. The Electoral College count stands at 306-232, with Biden over Trump. Period. End of story.

Oh, but wait. Now comes Trump saying that he would leave the White House if Biden can prove that the 80 million-plus votes he has racked up came about legitimately. That they were all legally cast votes.

Huh? Hey, Donald, I have news for you. The states that have certified the results have declared they all are legal, free and fair votes. They say without hesitation that there is no “widespread” voter fraud. There isn’t even any minuscule voter fraud, they say. These are election professionals who know what they are doing, unlike the lame-duck make-believe president who has been in over his head from the moment he took the oath in January 2017.

Donald Trump is leaving the White House no later than Jan. 20. I am rolling around in my head the idea that he might depart before then, forgoing the niceties associated with attending his successor’s inaugural. I mean, if he’s going to refuse to acknowledge that President-elect Biden, what’s the point of him and Melania even bothering to show up?

I only can imaging what might happen as he and the first lady step aboard Marine One for the flight away from the Capitol. It might get real ugly.

Chaos reigns supreme at the end of the Trump Era, just as reigned at its beginning. Who knew?

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Go slower out there!

BLOGGER’S NOTE — This blog was posted initially on KETR-FM’s website, KETR.org. 

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Princeton City Councilman Mike Robertson is a man after my own heart … speedwise.

He wants to slow motorists down as they travel along U.S. Highway 380, at least while they’re traveling within the city limits.

Robertson is pitching a notion to slow motorists down to 40 mph within the city limits. Currently, the limits vary, from 45, to 50 to 60 mph.

The Princeton Herald is covering this story and it quoted Robertson, thusly: “It doesn’t make any sense to keep such a high speed limit through town.” Yeah. Do you think?

Indeed, U.S. 380 often is clogged with stop-and-go traffic during much of the day. It’s a busy thoroughfare that coarses through the fast-growing community.

The city, though, has limited options. It cannot act on its own because U.S. 380 is maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation, according to the Princeton Herald, which reported: “The city does not have the authority to reduce the speed, however, it has taken measures to slow down traffic within city limits with one new stoplight and they are working on installing a second light.”

Indeed, the addition of signals comports with what City Manager Derek Borg told me about a year ago as we discussed the traffic issues along U.S. 380. Borg is acutely aware of the traffic snarls that occur along the highway and thinks the increased traffic signals, among other things, will help motorists seeking to enter the highway from side streets.

I believe Councilman Robertson is onto something. In fact, when I see the Herald each week, I look at the police blotter section on Page 2 … and what do I see? I often see several instances of “major auto accidents” along U.S. 380. The blotter entry doesn’t designate whether they are speed-related. My strong hunch is that, well, many of them are related to motorists traveling too rapidly along a busy thoroughfare choked with other motor vehicles.

The Herald reports that TxDOT is “receptive” to the idea of slowing vehicles down, but notes any action might require some time for a change to be made official.

Whatever you do, don’t drag your feet, TxDOT. I am one motorist and Princeton resident who backs a councilman’s request to slow the traffic down.

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Go ahead, Mr. POTUS … pardon yourself

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am going to make a suggestion that might surprise readers of this blog, which is that I believe Donald Trump ought to try to pardon himself for crimes he might have committed.

Would such a pardon be legal? Is it constitutional? Who in the name of juris prudence actually knows for certain? Hey, so go ahead, Mr. President, give it a try.

A presidential self-pardon could do a couple of things to Trump’s political future that he wouldn’t like. It would brand him forever as someone who is likely guilty of whatever crime he might  have committed. The acceptance of a pardon is an implied admission of guilt, right? Well, that’s how I see it … along with many legal and constitutional scholars.

Newsweek reported: On Thursday, CNN political commentator S.E. Cupp weighed in, saying pardon power should be reformed and Trump granting himself clemency would make him look guilty.

“If the president has designs on running again for president, this would certainly imperil that, and I would think encourage other justice departments to really look at what he had done while in office if he is tacitly admitting he needed to be pardoned for stuff,” Cupp said.

Therefore, if Trump is thinking about running for president in 2024, he will have to explain to Americans how someone who in effect admits to commit crimes can run for the office he lost in 2020? Oh, wait! I forgot that he wouldn’t have to persuade gullible GOP primary voters who think he’s the bee’s knees already, even though he has trashed the presidency, lied through his teeth repeatedly to everyone and made a mockery of every norm associated with the nation’s highest office.

The rest of us? Well, that’s another issue.

I don’t think it’s going to get that far, to be honest. I have serious doubts that Trump is going to run again for POTUS, but that’s just me, you know?

If a self-pardon is ruled to be illegal or unconstitutional were he to actually do it, Trump would face being called a dimwitted dipsh** who thought he could pull a fast one on the federal judiciary. But, hey, I already think that of him as it stands right now. Maybe others might catch on, too.

So, go ahead and give it a shot, Donald. Let’s see what this would do to your “brand.”

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POTUS-elect an ‘elitist’?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Washington Post reported the following today …

“Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote on Twitter. “I support American greatness. And I have no interest in returning to the ‘normal’ that left us dependent on China.”

I truly don’t know whether to laugh or scream.

A Republican Party with one of its members was elected president as a populist, is now accusing President-elect Joe Biden of being an elitist.

This is the fellow who commuted by train daily between Washington and Wilmington, Del., when he served in the Senate. Why did he do that? Because initially he was a widower with two young sons who needed their daddy home at night while the boys fought through their grief over the death of their mother and baby sister in a motor vehicle crash.

Yes, Joe Biden has appointed some learned individuals educated at Ivy League schools to join the Cabinet.

This “elitist” canard, though, is as phony as the assertion over the voter fraud assertion that the Whiner in Chief keeps alive.

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Hey, POTUS isn’t declaring COVID is ‘under control’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It occurs to me that Donald Trump’s phony fixation with a “fraudulent” election has kept him from repeating yet another series of lies.

Which is that we have the COVID coronavirus “under control.”

It damn sure isn’t anything of the sort.

Deaths are escalating; infections are skyrocketing; we’re setting “records” for infection, hospitalization, mortality. Donald Trump is silent on the pandemic. Hell, he cannot stop repeating that other lie, which is that “widespread voter fraud” resulted in President-elect Biden’s victory over Trump in the Nov. 3 election.

I am not suggesting that Trump’s silence on the pandemic is a blessing. Oh, no. We need a president who can speak truth on the issue. Trump’s inability to tell us the truth on anything does not bestow positivity on his silence; it merely reminds us of Trump’s penchant for prevarication.

Indeed, his attention is now focused on another bit of “fake news,” which is the phony issue of “widespread” voter fraud that, to put it bluntly, does not exist.

The good news? Donald Trump will exit the office in January. The new president, Joe Biden, will tell us the truth about the pandemic.

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U.S. set to resume its historic worldwide role

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 vowing to “put America first,” by thinking first of this country’s interest and, in effect, saying “to hell” with the rest of the world.

That policy didn’t work out well for the Trump administration.

Along came Joe Biden in 2020 to declare to the nation and the world that he intends to restore the United States’ historic role as the world’s most “indispensable nation.” American voters bought the Biden pitch, tossing Trump out of office on Election Day.

So here we are, about to re-enter the world community as Earth’s lone superpower. But here’s the difference between the start of Biden’s presidency and the beginning of the Trump term as president: President-elect Biden intends to offer respect for our allies and likely will refrain from the insults that Donald Trump hurled at them.

Joe Biden brings a lengthy public service career with him into the Oval Office. He served for a dozen years as chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee before becoming vice president in 2009. Biden parlayed the personal relationships he had built around the world as Foreign Relations chair into an effective role as point man for the Barack Obama administration.

Trump’s pre-presidential experience bore none of what Biden is bringing into the nation’s highest office. He ran a real estate company with a checkered history; he became a reality TV celebrity. Trump pointed his career toward the goal of enriching himself. Public service? He had zero experience and, oh brother, it showed.

Voters said “hell no!” to returning the carnival barker to the White House. A majority of them grew tired of the chaos. They are weary of the constant embarrassment that Trump brings with his incessant Twitter rants.

The United States is far from a perfect nation. Perfection is an impossible goal to attain. However, a lack of perfection does not prevent the United States from reasserting its role as world leader.

President Biden will take the oath of office and then will get to work bringing this nation back from its ill-fated electoral experiment that delivered an unfit individual to the nation’s highest political office.

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Trump plans to leave White House? Wow!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Jeepers, that is awfully big of Donald Trump to acknowledge the obvious.

Which is that when the Electoral College certifies what the whole world knows already, that President-elect Biden defeated Trump in the election earlier this month, that he’ll leave the White House.

Earth to Donald: You ain’t got a choice, dude!

I would actually hate seeing the Secret Service escorting the president out of the people’s house were he to dig in his heels.

Really! I would hate that!

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Ike exuded wisdom

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The gentleman in this picture ran twice for president of the United States.

The first time was in 1952; I was a toddler. The second time occurred four years later; I was in the second grade at Harvey W. Scott Elementary School in Portland, Ore. President Eisenhower won both elections in landslides over Adlai Stevenson.

I wasn’t old enough either time to “like Ike,” as the campaign slogan suggested. I do like Ike now as we have suffered through four years of the most hideous individual ever to occupy the office that Dwight Eisenhower once graced.

The text attributed to Ike in the photo above is more profound now, it seems, than when he said it in 1956.

Yes, we have seen Ike’s beloved Republican Party become a vessel for an amoral nincompoop. The man who helped liberate the world from tyranny in World War II and then became our commander in chief just eight years after that terrible conflict would not like what has transpired in the past four years.

He would be heartened, I believe — even with a Democrat, Joe Biden, about to take over — at what we all hope is a restoration of decency and morality in the nation’s highest office.

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Trump gripes, transition moves on

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s good to remember this while Donald Trump keeps lying about “widespread voter fraud,” a “rigged election” and how he “won handily.”

He can bitch and moan all he wants. The transition between his administration and President-elect Biden’s administration has begun. Joe Biden thinks he’s behind a little bit, but I am one American patriot who believes he is well-positioned, well-educated, well-versed in government enough to engineer a transition that will be as seamless as it could be … under difficult circumstances.

Those circumstances were brought on by Trump’s foot-dragging, his refusal to accept the obvious — that he lost the Nov. 3 election — and by his obstinance in clinging to power. There’s also the pandemic, which Trump also refuses to address head-on. The moron.

Biden’s knowledge of the government he will inherit and his deep reservoir of contacts with that government will serve him well.

So, to Donald Trump … you can bitch all you want. Most of us — and the world watching from afar — know what’s about to happen. You will be gone. Goodbye and good fu**ing riddance. 

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