national news

Bias against The Donald? No-o-o-o!

Can it be that we’re now going to see a first lady feud develop between two women; one is married to someone who served as POTUS, and the other is married to the current president of the United States?

Melania Trump didn’t get to appear on the cover of Vogue magazine. Now she is blasting the magazine because if put Jill Biden on its cover. She blames “media bias” against her for the alleged slight against her.

According to The Daily Mail: In her first interview since leaving the White House, Melania Trump told Fox Nation that she believes media bias against her is the reason for the discrepancy.

I don’t think there was a bias against her, necessarily. Her husband, though, is another matter. Donald J. Trump engendered plenty of “bias” against him for a host of reasons.

His denigrating of prisoners of war, his mocking of people with disabilities, his admitted philandering and the admission that he sexually assaulted women. Oh, there’s more. You get the point.

Melania Trump ought to pipe down and maybe — if she dares to do so — have a serious discussion with her husband about the way he has conducted himself since he became a politician.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS loses ‘trust’?

Think of the irony of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggesting that the nation’s highest court has lost “trust” because someone leaked a draft document that hints that the court is poised to overturn a landmark ruling that legalized abortion in this country.

Justice Thomas spoke to a judicial conference in Dallas. “When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” he said.

Wow!

Clarence Thomas says Supreme Court changed by leak of draft abortion opinion (msn.com)

Excuse me for laughing out loud. The court also lost trust when one of its members, Justice Thomas, chose to take part in a ruling involving Donald Trump’s role in the 1/6 insurrection. Ginni Thomas, wife of the justice, is an avid Trumpkin and took part at the start of the demonstration that turned into an assault on our democracy on 1/6.

I believe Thomas should resign from the court. He won’t do the right thing. The next right thing would be to recuse himself from any court matter related to the former POTUS’s effort to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. He won’t do that, either.

Oh, no. Instead, he is going to pontificate about the court losing the trust of the people because someone decided to leak a draft opinion that sets up a monumental battle between pro-abortion rights Americans and those who would make it a crime for a woman to decide to terminate a pregnancy.

Trust? Clarence Thomas has no moral standing to talk about whether the Supreme Court has lost it. Whatever loss it has suffered is due largely because of the associate justice himself.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Family men? Yeah, right!

Driving the other day through the Texas Hill Country, I saw a campaign poster for a woman running for the Legislature … and it brought to mind the hypocrisy of so many male politicians I have watched over many years.

The candidate, whose name escapes me, was pictured with her family. Her husband and children surrounded her in the photo. I thought, “How sweet is that?”

Then I told my wife that the picture reminded me of all the men I have watched seek public office campaigning with pictures of them expressing devotion to their wives and children … only to watch it all come crashing down amid scandal.

I cannot even count the pols I have seen crumble and crater. A couple of my “favorites” do stand out.

Sen. John Edwards ran for vice president in 2004 on the Democratic Party ticket led by Sen. John Kerry. Edwards told crowds of his love for his wife, Elizabeth. He didn’t say, naturally, that at that very time he was involved in an extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter. Oh, and Mrs. Edwards was dying of cancer at the time!

Another one is Republican U.S. Rep. Van Taylor, who this year was running for re-election the congressional seat he held since 2019. He had shown himself with his wife and kids, too. Taylor happens to represent my family and me in Congress. Then, while preparing to participate in a GOP runoff this year, Taylor revealed he had a months-long affair with a woman who once was married to an Islamic State officer. His re-election campaign came to an end.

These are the examples of hypocrisy we don’t see among female candidates for public office.

For that I am delighted. If only the men who seek our support for public office could be as faithful to their own sacred vows. Given the annoying regularity with which they let us down, I have grown instantly suspicious of any politician who proclaims his faithfulness to the person he loves.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

environmental news

Hey, it’s still just spring!

You’ll remember, I am sure, when we all were bitching about the freezing temperatures, about how winter just wouldn’t release its grip on North Texas.

It wasn’t that long ago, right?

Well, we don’t have to gripe about shivering at night.

The weather guys and gals are telling us we’re going to set heat records this weekend in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area. Temps are going to approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit!

Now, let me be clear about something. I am not going to launch into a climate change rant; I’ll save that for another day.

I just want to remind everyone — I hope you’re sitting down for this — that the start of summer is still five weeks away!

Stay cool, y’all.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Rep. Jackson: shut up!

A strange thing has occurred — or it’s still occurring — as I continue to offer comment on a member of the Texas congressional delegation.

Republican Ronny Jackson represents the 13th District in the Texas Panhandle, where I lived for 23 years before my bride and I relocated in 2018 to the Metroplex.

I had been a bit hesitant to keep yapping about this right-wing blowhard. I mean, he was their congressman. I had my own right-winger — Van Taylor — to keep me occupied. Taylor, though, had a months-long affair with the former wife of an Islamic State officer, thus blowing a huge hole in his family-man image.

Well, Taylor is leaving Congress at the end of the year. Jackson is likely to be re-elected. He’s also becoming something of a national right-wing political figure, albeit for reasons that make my blood boil.

Jackson has become a darling of the right-wing media because he is so damn reckless, feckless and downtown stupid in his pronouncements about President Biden. He shows up on Fox News, on Newsmax and on One America Network to tell the audience that Biden is inept, incompetent and incoherent. The hosts nod approvingly and so Jackson goes on and on.

I believe he is nothing more than a right-wing dipsh**.

Ronny Jackson doesn’t know me from Adam. I only know of him through what I see on his Twitter feed and from reports of his appearances on the aforementioned right-wing media outlets.

Given that he has achieved some sort of national standing, though, I feel more comfortable telling readers of this blog what I think of his blathering.

I just want him to shut the hell up.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, military news

How does Ukraine persist?

When the Russians invaded Ukraine I was skeptical that the Ukrainians would be able to declare victory on the battlefield. The Russian army was numerically and technically superior to Ukraine.

Then the Russians discovered something in real time on the field of battle. The first thing, apparently, was that they weren’t as fearsome a fighting force as they — or many of the rest of us — thought they were. The second thing is that they likely underestimated the Ukrainians’ will to fight to protect their homeland against a foreign invader.

What astounds me is that the Russians’ misjudgment of Ukraine’s will to fight would exist at all, given their own country’s military history.

In June 1941, Adolf Hitler launched the invasion of the Soviet Union. He likely didn’t think the Russians would fight to the death in the manner that they did. The Red Army then turned the tide against Hitler’s forces in a city once known as Stalingrad. Let us not forget that Ukrainians were fighting alongside Russians in their struggle against the Nazi invaders. Oh … the irony.

This is what happens when a nation invades another sovereign state. They learn that their adversary is committed to the struggle to survive and their commitment well could carry them forward against a supposedly superior military force.

We hear now several things are going badly for the Russians. They have lost several field generals in the battle; the Russian troops are suffering from low morale; Russian soldiers aren’t obeying officers’ orders; Ukraine is getting plenty of help from allied nations — such as the United States; the Ukrainians are putting their military hardware to good use.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not about to declare that Ukraine will declare victory and that Russia is going to skulk off the battlefield. There likely will be much more struggle to take place.

It does make me wonder how much more humiliation Russian despot Vladimir Putin can take. Moreover, I will stand on my belief that Putin is not stupid enough to launch a nuclear strike, given his knowledge of how “mutually assured destruction” would play out.

If there is an exit to be found, my strongest hope is that Putin can look for it and get the hell out of Ukraine. I wouldn’t even mind if he decides to declare victory. Let him crow all he wants. The world will know better.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Customs thrown aside

Presidential custom is a big part of the nation’s highest office, particularly when the occupants of that office depart.

One of those customs is to see former POTUSes lock arms for common causes. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama recently did a public service announcement seeking to rally the nation against the COVID pandemic. I saw the ad and wondered — get ready for it — where was Donald Trump? I mean, the pandemic exploded on Trump’s watch!

We see these kinds of dramas play out from time to time.

The same can be said of former first ladies. Michelle Obama and Laura Bush have shared the spotlight to talk about their time in the White House. Melania Trump? She, too, has been absent from any sort of public appearances with her colleagues.

Donald Trump left office an angry and bitter individual. His animus toward President Biden remains visceral. Same for how he explodes at the mention of Barack Obama’s name, or George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton.

We once boasted in this country about how presidencies transfer from one to another, across party lines, and without rancor. We once referred to the “seamless transition of power.” It wasn’t that way when Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020. We are still feeling the pain of that horrible hand-off from one administration to the next one.

Along the way, we are watching feel-good presidential customs torn apart. What an utter shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

MAGA this, MAGA that

Oh, how I find it so interesting the way some expressions take on lives of their own, how they become words suitable for conversation.

Take the word “MAGA.”

It’s an acronym, of course. It stands for Make America Great Again. The Donald Trump campaign for president in 2016 ran on that slogan. Trump managed to win in the biggest political fluke in U.S. history.

Since then, the term has become a noun and an adjective.

“I am going to a MAGA rally,” someone might say.

Or, “How about that MAGA sign?”

How about, “Can you believe the number of MAGAs out here?

The acronym as it’s pronounced does roll off the tongue. I prefer to avoid using it whenever possible. Except perhaps for purposes of making a point on my blog, which I am attempting to do at this moment.

To be candid, the term — and, more to the point, what its spell-out version tells us — just pisses me off. To say we are going to “make America great again” is to suggest the country has been less than great.

America is a great nation. It’s been great for a long time. We emerged from World War II as the planet’s pre-eminent military and economic power.

What’s more, the juxtaposition of MAGA in the presence of certain symbols fills me with rage. Picture a MAGA follower toting a Confederate flag or much worse, parading under a swastika. Do you get my drift? Good!

I get that Donald Trump’s campaign didn’t coin the phrase that has become an acronym. Bill Clinton said the same thing while campaigning for POTUS in 1992.

Still, it has taken on a life of its own. It’s become a dangerous metaphor for anger and paranoia.

It’s weird, man.

I just want to proclaim that the only time I use the term MAGA is to deride it … and those who adhere to it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Lock him up?

Donald J. Trump used to relish hearing crowds chant “Lock her up!” when the issue turned to how Hillary Clinton handled her email operation during her time as secretary of state.

You’ve seen the video of the Republican presidential candidate just letting the cultists go on and on. Right? Sure you have!

Well, what do we have now? We have reports that as a lame-duck POTUS, the White House hauled 15 boxes of classified information out of the presidential residence and sent them to Mar-a-Lago, Fla.

The Justice Department is now in the midst of an investigation into whether someone broke the law when The Donald exited Washington for his glitzy resort. Hmm, do ya think?

Donald Trump was the most ignorant imbecile ever elected to the nation’s highest office. He had no respect for the law or the secrets he took a solemn and sacred oath to protect.

I am left to simply shake my head and to wonder whether I should lead a chant of my own to “Lock him up!”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Not this much, city council

When has anyone in real life ever gotten a 200%-plus pay increase all at once? Umm. No one?

Thus, it shouldn’t surprise anyone — I was not surprise, for sure — to see Fort Worth voters nix a proposed monstrous pay increase for their mayor and city council members.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

The mayor makes $29,000 annually and individual council members make $25,000.

The proposition would have tied the mayor’s pay to half the average salary of department heads and the council members’ to half the average of the city assistant department heads. That comes out to $99,653 for the mayor, a 244% increase. The pay for council members would be $76,727, an increase of 207%.

Can I hear an “eek!”?

Fort Worth voters say no to pay raise for mayor, City Council members (msn.com)

Mayor Mattie Parker said she deserves to be paid more than the current amount. I am not going to pass judgment on that assertion. All I can say with some degree of confidence is that Fort Worth voters more than likely were in no mood to shell out that kind of an increase when they are struggling to pay more for practically everything they purchase.

And they aren’t getting a huge pay raise to lighten their load.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience