State news

FBI now probing Texas AG? Wow!

(Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The hits just keep coming.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s been indicted and is awaiting trail on charges of securities fraud, is now under investigation by the FBI for allegedly doing favors for a political donor.

Good grief! The AG should resign! His credibility is in tatters. Several of his top legal eagles filed a whistleblower complaint against him, urging the feds to examine what they contend are a series of transgressions, which happen to include bribery.

Now we hear from The Associated Press that the FBI is taking a hard look at what Paxton allegedly did.

As the Texas Tribune has reported: Two unnamed sources told the AP that the bureau was examining claims made by the whistleblowers that Paxton broke the law by intervening several times in legal matters involving Nate Paul, a real estate investor and friend who donated $25,000 to Paxton’s campaign in 2018.

Oh, man! Don’t we deserve to have a chief state law enforcement officer who is clear of any sort of question or suspicion of wrongdoing? I happen to believe we do deserve better than we’re getting from this Republican attorney general.

I stand by my call for Ken Paxton to resign. I don’t much care about his future. I do care about the questions that have sullied the high office he occupies.

national news

Wanting a ‘normal’ and ‘boring’ POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot in good conscience take credit for thinking of this, but I have no problem repeating it here.

I am waiting anxiously for a return to a “boring” U.S. presidency.

Donald Trump’s term has been fraught with anxiety at almost every level imaginable. What in the world is this guy going to say via Twitter? Who will he fire? What policy statement will be fire off without consulting with anyone other than his innards? Who is he going to pi** off with a reckless tweet?

Those days are soon to be behind us. President-elect Biden will become President Biden on Jan. 20 and soon — as in immediately — my hope is that we return to a normal presidency. One that includes sane political judgment based on same political discussion.

Whereas the current president came from the world of business where he was his own boss and didn’t answer to anyone, the new president comes from the world of government. That’s where the people — you and I — are the collective boss. We call the shots. We did so with the election, deciding we had enough of the turbulence, tumult and tempest that accompanied damn near everything that Donald Trump did.

I am so ready for a return to what we used to think of as “normal” behavior from our head of state.

national news

Revenge firings … that’s what they are!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald John Trump has taken the “art” of revenge firing to a despicable new low.

The outgoing president of the United States decided to fire the man he hired to make our election more secure for — are you ready for this? — declaring that the 2020 presidential election is the safest and most secure in U.S. history.

What’s more, Department of Homeland Security official Christopher Krebs got word of his firing via Twitter, which is Trump’s modus operandi for issuing these policy pronouncements.

All Krebs did was issue a statement that runs diametrically counter to Trump’s narrative, which is that President-elect Biden won the election because it is “rigged.” Trump is hollering about “widespread voter fraud” where none exists. Krebs had the temerity to say as much in his statement to the world.

So now he’s gone. Trump has hired another lackey to take Krebs’s place … and the phony narrative will continue to fester on the public stage.

Hey, I realize I said I would concentrate on Joe Biden’s developing presidency rather than worry about what’s left of Trump’s term in office. I just cannot let this shameful example of vengeance go unnoticed. So there.

national news

Biden enters office with loads of credibility

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Biden’s efforts to transition from private citizen to the highest public office in the nation has been difficult to watch from afar.

Donald Trump keeps trying to stymie his successor’s efforts to reach full speed on domestic, scientific and foreign policy matters.

However, I am going to take some comfort in the knowledge that Biden brings to the presidency owing to his nearly five decades in public service.

The president-elect served 36 years in the U.S. Senate before becoming vice president in 2009. During that time in the Senate he chaired the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees for a total of 24 years. He built friendships and assorted professional and political relationships with hundreds of folks in this country and abroad.

Biden hasn’t yet received the kind of high-level briefing afforded customarily to presidents-elect, but he is able to reach beyond normal channels to experts from around the world for advice and  counsel.

The president-elect’s years of experience in public service will serve him well as he takes office, even if he is unable to obtain the kind of cooperation that outgoing president’s usually offer.

My hope springs eternal that eventually Donald Trump will put the country’s interests first and allow the transition to proceed as it should.

If that hope is never realized, I am going to believe that President-elect Joe Biden will be able to parlay his vast experience into an effective presidency … even as he struggles to get our new government up to speed.

medical news

Hire the best … and listen to them!

(Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What do you know about this?

It appears President-elect Joe Biden might be inheriting an actual positive result that has its roots during the Donald Trump administration. That would be the seemingly pending discovery of a vaccine for the coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly a quarter million Americans.

Two big pharma outfits — Pfizer and Moderna — have declared initial success with vaccines they are running through clinical trials. They boast of success rates of more than 90 percent. Finally there might be some good news to report after months and months of misery.

What is the president-elect’s task now? It is to adhere to the advice given him by the medical team he is assembling to combat this killer virus. Biden doesn’t want a nationwide lockdown. However, he must not be swayed by the political consequence of such an event.

Dr. Scott Atlas currently serves as Trump’s go-to guy on the pandemic. Atlas, though, is not an infectious disease expert. Indeed, he hasn’t practiced medicine for a decade. He is a hack, a political donor who landed a job that should have gone to someone with actual experience and knowledge of infectious diseases.

Atlas also had the terrible judgment to say that Americans should “rise up” against government mandates designed to save their lives. What the hell? He said he wasn’t advocating violence … but it looks like he was doing precisely that to me.

Please, Mr. President-elect, avoid that kind of appointment. Whatever you do, make good on your pledge to “follow the science.” Biden must surround himself with experts and then he must actually heed what they tell him.

The signs are filled with promise the new administration is going to march down a different path than the one used by the government it will replace.

That, folks, is a very good thing.

national news

Mask-wearing: not a political statement

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, whom I have dubbed the Cruz Missile, is demonstrating once again why I dislike him so intensely.

He decided to describe his fellow senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio, as acting “like a complete ass” because Brown insisted that the senator presiding over the body wear a mask.

Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska was without a mask when he presided. Brown wanted him to put one one, believing that he posed a potential threat of infecting other senators, given that they were meeting in an enclosed room, aka the Senate chamber.

As The Hill reported: “This is idiotic,” Cruz tweeted Monday night, adding that Brown “is being a complete ass. He wears a mask to speak – when nobody is remotely near him – as an ostentatious sign of fake virtue.”

No, Ted. Your colleague is acting out what some have referred to as an “abundance of caution” in light of the pandemic that continues to kill Americans at an alarming rate each day. Perhaps he has read about it; this pandemic’s been in all the papers, man.

Cruz is now being discussed as a possible 2024 GOP presidential candidate. Hmm. His theme well might be: Wear a mask and be an ass.

national news

Focusing now on Joe Biden

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to make two quick points, then I’ll step aside.

First, I have declared that Donald Trump is sliding rapidly into irrelevancy as a defeated candidate for re-election as president of the United States.

Therefore, I am going to spend equally rapidly declining effort commenting on his still-incessant lying.

Second, this blog is going to concentrate instead on President-elect Joe Biden’s transition into the nation’s highest office. I want to offer him advice when I feel I can provide it. I might even scold him if he says or does something that displeases me. Hey, no one is perfect … you know?

It’s time for High Plains Blogger to turn the proverbial page.

Thus, I have just done so.

Good night.

national news

Putin is laughing his a** off

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Do you know who among all the world leaders is laughing so hard he is having trouble catching his breath?

It has to be Russian strongman/despot/dictator/former Soviet spy chief Vladimir Putin. That’s who.

Think of it. His boy, Donald Trump, lost his re-election bid for a second term as U.S. president. Trump is refusing to concede to President-elect Joe Biden. He is withholding national security information from the new president’s team. He is fighting the results in courts all over the place; and he’s getting them tossed by judges.

Trump is sowing seeds of discord in our electoral system.

Isn’t that precisely what Putin sought to do in 2016? And again in 2020? Isn’t this kind of activity that former special counsel Robert Mueller III warned us would happen?

Trump is fabricating a story where none exists.

And yet Vladimir Putin must be laughing his keister off as he watches from the Kremlin while Trump continues this ridiculous effort to undermine a political system he took a sacred oath to defend and protect.

I do hope the new president is taking plenty of notes and will get Putin on the phone soon and read him the riot act, warning him of serious consequences for his interference in our electoral system.

national news

Can Biden resist the extremists?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump demonstrated during his term as president an inability to resist the demands of those on the far right wing of the Republican Party.

As an aside, I’ll resist referring to the GOP as “his” party because I consider Trump to be a Republican In Name Only.

No such qualifier is required of President-elect Joe Biden, a center-left Democrat with years of credentials to illustrate the point.

So, the question of the day is this: Will the new president be able or is he willing to resist the tug from those on the far left wing of his own party? 

I am just a single voter, but I’ll offer this: I hope he can and does. I voted for a “good government” presidential candidate, which is what I see in President-elect Biden. By “good government,” I favor a federal government that is prepared to step up and help when needed, but is not willing to capture all the duties and responsibilities assigned to state and local governments, or the private sector.

I sense the president-elect is of the same ilk as yours truly. If that proves out to be the case, then I will be happy.

Meanwhile, the president-elect will have to steel himself for the onslaught of pressure he no doubt will feel from the “democratic socialist” wing of the Democratic Party. To be candid, I still am not sure what a democratic socialist is, other than perhaps being someone who doesn’t want the government to assume control of every aspect of our lives.

Still, I sense in Joe Biden a reluctance to avoid the socialist label, despite what Donald Trump and the GOP sought to attach to him. Trump accused Biden of being “anti-God,” of wanting to take guns away from Americans — while destroying the Second Amendment to the Constitution, of disarming the military, of taxing us into oblivion.

I have looked at Biden’s record and to be honest I don’t see evidence of any of that during his 44 years as a U.S. senator and vice president.

The man is a mainstream Democrat. I want him to govern that way. I am going to hold out hope that he will do as I wish. If not, then he will hear from me. Hey, if he does govern the way I want him to govern, he might still hear from me.

national news

He no longer matters

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The 2020 presidential election has affirmed what I have thought now for years.

It is that Donald John Trump’s lies no longer matter. He is soon to be gone from the scene. A new president, Joe Biden, will take over on Jan. 20.

Yes, it is clear that Trump remains president until Joe Biden takes the presidential oath. He will be vested with all the power of the office. I merely pray as we watch the clock tick away the final moments of his tenure that he doesn’t do anything foolish. I have no need to explain what such foolishness might entail; I am certain that you get my drift.

As for Trump’s lies, well, I quit listening to them long ago. I accept nothing he says. I do not believe anything that flies out of his lying mouth.

And so we are left with a lame-duck president who is doing nothing to curb the killer virus that is raging across the country; he does nothing to re-engage Congress on a stimulus package to help families stricken by the virus; he does not a single thing to advance our alliances abroad.

Instead, he will foment the phony lie about a rigged election, about “widespread voter fraud” and will continue to insist that he actually “won” the presidential when he actually lost it by the same Electoral College total he won in 2016. Oh, and remember when he called his victory over Hillary Clinton a “landslide”?

Donald Trump is history. For that I am grateful that democracy has worked its magic on a system that cried out for help.

The voters have delivered it.

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