national news

Impeachment? Old news!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

When the U.S. of Representatives impeached Donald Trump in late 2019, I was certain that we had just witnessed the rough draft of the first line of Trump’s obituary.

It would read: Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the third president impeached by the House …

Silly me. I didn’t envision that the draft would be rewritten by what we are witnessing now in real time, which is the undermining by the defeated president of the Constitution he took an oath to defend and protect.

It now might read: Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States who sought to challenge the validity of a free and fair election that resulted in his defeat for re-election to a second term … 

How might that hold up? Well, I don’t know. We have another 60 or so days to go before President-elect Biden takes the oath as the nation’s 46th president. There’s still more time for Biden’s predecessor to something really foolish, reckless or maybe even illegal!

I am heartened by the reality that looms just down the road, which is that Joe Biden will become President Biden at noon on Jan. 20. There is nothing Trump can do to forestall that event from occurring. President Biden will take the oath, accept the congratulations from Chief Justice John Roberts, hug and kiss his wife, children and grandchildren; they all will take part in an inaugural parade.

Then the president will enter the Oval Office and get to work.

Trump, meanwhile, will recede into the background. He won’t be silent. He won’t go quietly. Trump will have played out all his limited number of options. He’ll be gone.

That obituary remains to be written. Indeed, I wish him a long post-presidency life. Donald Trump needs to hear and see how history will chronicle the mess he left for his successor to clean up and repair.

The impeachment we all endured seems so long ago. It has become old news, thanks to the tactics Trump is using to undermine our democratic process.

I don’t think it can get any more significant than that. Then again, we are dealing with a man who is capable of damn near anything to hold onto power.

More to come … aack!

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Hey, it could be worse

(DoD photo by Senior Master Sgt. Thomas Meneguin, U.S. Air Force/Released)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Oh, the agony of watching this presidential transition wiggle and writhe as Donald Trump refuses to concede he lost the 2020 election to President-elect Biden.

Here’s some good news, folks: It’s going to end Jan. 20, when Biden takes the oath of office. Here’s some better news: The 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enacted after the President Franklin Roosevelt’s election to his first term, moved the inaugural up from March 4.

Imagine this posturing dragging on for another several weeks, which could be the case were it not for the 20th Amendment being ratified in 1933.

President Herbert Hoover and FDR had such a poisonous relationship after the 1932 election that it illustrated the need to move the inaugural from March 4 to Jan. 20. The amendment was ratified on Jan. 23, 1933, which suggests that the momentum was building long before the Hoover-Roosevelt election.

I cannot imagine that hatred being any more toxic than what we’re witnessing these days. It was, I suppose.

I am just waiting now for Jan. 20 to come and go. We’ll get past this hideous display of presidential petulance.

medical news

Vaccine on the way … will it spell end to pandemic?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s difficult for me to avoid getting too ramped up over news that a vaccine that could eradicate the COVID-19 virus is on its way to a pharmacy near me.

Pfizer has announced a potential vaccine with a 95 percent cure rate; Moderna has a similar vaccine in the works; Astrazenica does, too. Big pharma, which gets whipped and flogged all the time, is answering the call.

It’s all part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed. It’s fashionable these days to bash the daylights out of Donald Trump … who deserves every bit of the thrashing he is getting for a whole host of reasons.

Operation Warp Speed, the code name for the administration’s effort to find a cure for the disease, has been a mixed bag to be sure. The pharmaceutical companies haven’t gotten the federal help that was promised, but they appear to be delivering trial versions of vaccines that well could be the proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel.”

I am not yet ready to whoop and holler, proclaiming it to be the news for which an entire nation has waited, but it does look promising.

Given all the bad news we’re getting — Trump’s refusal to concede his loss to President-elect Biden and the undermining of our democratic process, not to mention the death and misery caused by the pandemic — I will cling to the hope that we might awaken soon from this national nightmare.

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What happened to Rudy?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have been thinking of the tragedies that have emerged from Donald Trump’s term as president and I come up — so far — with just one tragic story.

It involves Rudy Giuliani, who’s now serving as Trump’s lead lawyer in the futile and feckless fight to overturn the results of the election Trump lost this month to President-elect Biden.

I mean, I have to collect myself a bit just to comprehend what has happened to the man who’s gone from hero to zero in the span of roughly two decades.

There he was, standing with President Bush after the 9/11 attacks on his city and the Pentagon. Giuliani served as NYC mayor. He became “America’s mayor.” Time magazine named him its person of the year in 2001 for the courage he demonstrated in helping his city  clean itself up after the wreckage that the terrorists delivered on that terrible day.

Before that the mayor served as a crime-fighting, mob-busting federal prosecutor.

I watch the videos of him from back in the post-9/11 era and wonder: What in the name of God in heaven happened to this guy?

He has devolved into a shill for Donald Trump. These days he is fomenting crazy and utterly stupid conspiracy theories about phony election fraud allegations. Did you saw him sweating during that presser this week, with hair dye dripping down both sides of his face? My goodness!

Rudy was ridiculous, citing a scene from “My Cousin Vinny” as evidence in a wacky conspiracy theory.

Well, you know all that. You know that America’s mayor has become America’s fool. I don’t know how you might feel about the deterioration of this once-stellar public servant. I will stand by my view that we are witnessing a tragedy in the making.

It saddens me beyond measure.

national news

Trump legacy? Shattered!

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This will come as no big surprise, but I have to get this off my chest.

Donald Trump’s legacy as president of the United States was — at best — destined to be a mixed, but mostly negative, compilation of historical fact.

Then came his losing bid for re-election. President-elect Biden is trying to form a government. He is being stymied and blocked at every level by Donald Trump.

The lame-duck president essentially had two courses he could have taken after losing the election.

He could have accepted the election result, offered a tepid “concession” and then released his team to assist in the transition. He could have kept his trap shut and gone out quietly.

He chose another course. He has alleged voter fraud where none exists. He has withheld presidential briefings from the new president and his national security team. Trump has withheld cooperation on the pandemic response, while hundreds of Americans continue to die each day. POTUS is meddling in states’ efforts to certify their election results, which already have told us that Biden won and Trump lost.

What is all this going to do to whatever legacy Donald Trump sought to leave behind? It will shatter it into a zillion pieces.

Trump is now going to be remembered as a joke, a fraud, a laughingstock, a hideous political aberration, a dangerous wannabe despot.

Nice going, Donald.

national news

Hoping to avoid head explosion

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My head may be about to explode.

I am trying to wrap my noggin around what is continuing to unfold after President-elect Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Trump is refusing to concede to Biden. He is withholding national security briefing material from the new team. Trump’s foot-dragging is stymying the president-elect’s transition team.

Worst of all, he is blocking efforts to enable the new team to prepare for how it plans to deal with the COVID pandemic that continues to kill hundreds of American every day.

I am at a loss as to how I am supposed to react to this. It is outrageous that Trump is doing this. It also outrageous that he seems to care not a damn bit that lives are going to be lost because of this astonishing, astounding, shameful refusal to accept the plain fact that Trump lost to Biden in a transparent, free and fair election. There was no “widespread voter fraud.”

Trump is preaching the Big Lie … delivering fake news!

He is committing arguably the most un-American act many of us have ever witnessed.

What’s more, we have plenty of shame to pass around.

Let’s start with congressional Republicans who continue to resist acknowledging President-elect Biden’s victory. Good God in heaven! they are even refusing to refer to him as “president-elect,” choosing instead to engage in some sort of verbal gymnastics. They have become cowed by a lame-duck president who is continuing to play to his cult of personality.

They, too, are engaging in a shameful display of cowardice the likes of which is utterly beyond my ability to comprehend.

I am struggling to hold onto my hope that Trump eventually will do what he must do, which is accept President-elect Biden’s victory and allow the transition to the new team to commence … at all levels!

It is getting more difficult with each passing day and each outrageous act by the Sore Loser in Chief.

I don’t want my head to explode.

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Welcome back, Barack Obama

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I feel obliged to say how glad I am to hear former President Obama’s voice once again as the nation continues its political discussion and debate.

He is critical of Donald J. Trump. No surprise there, right?

What is a surprise is that Trump’s immediate predecessor has weighed in now, at the end of Trump’s term as president. Then again, maybe it should not be such a surprise.

Trump spent a good bit of emotional capital during his term as president trashing the record compiled by President Obama. He took every chance he could find to denigrate Obama’s record, to declare his intention to undo the accomplishments Obama rang up.

The Affordable Care Act? Obama’s record on renewable energy development? Obama’s agreeing to join the Paris Climate Accords? Trump called them all a “disaster.”

So now it’s President Obama’s turn to strike back. Yes, the norm has been for former presidents to sit in a corner and let his immediate successor rise or fall on his own. Obama did that very thing during much of Trump’s term. No longer.

Welcome back, Mr. President. I enjoy hearing your voice.

national news

Once a ‘landslide,’ now it’s … something else?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Biden is closing in on an 80-million vote election victory. They’re still counting ballots, but the new president is about to cross an amazing threshold.

He’s already won an Electoral College victory, which all by itself puts him in the victor’s circle. Biden has 306 electoral votes; Donald Trump has 232 electoral votes.

Sound familiar? It should. Trump won in 2016 over Hillary Clinton by the same Electoral College margin. Four years ago, Trump called it a “landslide.” It wasn’t. Neither is the Biden victory over Trump this time. It is a substantial victory nonetheless, which I am certain just rankles Donald Trump to no end.

Too … bad, Donald.

But the actual vote is impressive. Biden has set a record for the number of ballots. Trump, too, has set a record for the most votes collected by the losing candidate. They’re both impressive totals.

One of them, though, is the winner. That would be Joe Biden.

It gives me reason to smile as they keep counting the ballots.

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Fan of private space missions

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I never thought I ever would say what I am about to say.

Which is that I have become a fan of privately financed space travel.

You see, I am a huge fan of NASA, the government’s space agency. NASA has been front and center of the nation’s space program. It led the nation in its race with the Soviet Union to see which of the two superpowers would be the first to put human beings on the moon.

We won that race, thanks to NASA.

The United States isn’t sending astronauts into space these days aboard U.S.-government-financed rockets. We are relying on the Russians to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.

We also are flying astronauts into orbit aboard Space X rockets, developed and financed by a fellow named Elon Musk, the guy whose company makes Tesla automobiles.

I am thrilled to the max watching the Space X rockets blast off from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Space X this week sent another crew to the ISS. The launch was perfect. The docking of the ship with the ISS also was done to perfection.

Make no mistake that I still hope for a return of U.S. government-sponsored space missions. I am awaiting development of a ship that will take Americans to Mars. I hope to live long enough to watch that mission unfold.

Until then, I will continue to cheer the feats of the crews launched into space by Elon Musk’s rockets.

Man, space travel continues to amaze me, even in this age of private sponsorship of rockets that send American astronauts into space.

national news

Optimism taking a hit

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am by nature an optimist. Really, it’s true!

Thus, I have sought to maintain an optimistic outlook as President-elect Biden seeks to form a government even while Donald Trump has refused to accept what we all know what occurred on Nov. 3.

Biden defeated Trump. His vote margin is approaching 6 million ballots. Biden’s electoral vote margin sits at 306-232. My hope has been all along that Biden could form a government and begin the task of “restoring our national soul” while unifying a badly divided nation.

Events of the past 10 days or so are testing my optimistic instincts.

Trump is fomenting the Big Lie that the election was rigged. It was nothing of the sort. Yet polling suggests that roughly 30 percent of American voters believe the lame-duck president’s ridiculous and dangerous assertion about “widespread” voter fraud.

This puts Biden’s mission of reunification in potentially dire peril. He pledges to be the president of “all Americans.” He said that “even if you voted for President Trump,” Biden will be your president, too. How can that be a bad thing? Did we hear such a proclamation from Donald Trump when he took office? He did pledge to unify the nation, but then embarked on a strategy that aimed to please only the base of supporters who have hung with him throughout his term.

I still am cautiously optimistic that the president-elect will be able to formally “transition” into the nation’s highest office. However, “cautiously” is becoming more important as I express my hope for that outcome.

Donald Trump’s petulance has grown into a dangerous gambit that threatens us at many levels. It is endangering a new president’s noble pledge to restore our national soul and bridge the partisan chasm that divides the nation he was elected to govern.

My optimistic nature is being strained. I hope the stress and strain doesn’t break it.

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