national news

No ‘fake news’ here

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A Donald Trump campaign staffer laid it on the line.

“Hard to say fake news when there is audio of his comments,” the staffer said.

What we have here are Donald Trump’s own words saying things that have caused yet another eruption on the 2020 presidential election campaign trail.

Donald Trump spoke at length with legendary reporter Bob Woodward, who’s about to release a book, “Rage.” What did Trump say that has caused such an upheaval? Oh, only that he knew in February that the COVID-19 pandemic was a deadly event, but that he deliberately withheld any warning signs of doom because he didn’t want to cause “panic” among Americans.

So, let’s see how we connect a few dots.

Donald Trump vowed to protect Americans when he became president of the United States. Then in the earliest weeks of 2020, a virus was detected overseas. Donald Trump’s initial public reaction was to declare that the coronavirus would disappear, that it would vanish like a “miracle.” No sweat, he said. Nothing to see here, he reminded us.

Except now we hear that he knew early on that we had a relentless killer knocking on our door. And that Donald Trump refused to do a damn thing to protect Americans.

Good ever-lovin’ grief! Is this a “promise kept” or is it a sacred oath violated?

The word now is that the Trump campaign and the White House are “scrambling” to craft — or concoct — a cogent message to respond to Trump’s own words.

There, indeed, can be no “fake news” retort from Team Trump, or from Trump himself. Although, and this point should be made, not a damn thing ever has prevented Trump from invoking that phony excuse even when the evidence has been laid directly at his feet.

national news

Trump sets the bar so very low

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I guess I have figured out how Donald Trump gets away with his lying, his misleading statements and his continual assaults on foes via innuendo and invective.

Trump has managed to lower the bar to ground level. That is to say that Americans do not expect this guy to behave like a mature, sophisticated and nuanced adult as he conducts the affairs of state.

Trump has changed the equation. I just hope it isn’t a forever change.

That all circles back to why I want him defeated Nov. 3. It is why I want Joe Biden to take office in January as our 46th president of the United States.

A famed Republican lawyer, an expert on elections, has written an op-ed in which he declares that Trump’s so-called fear of election fraud caused by mail-in balloting is “misleading.”  So said Ben Ginsburg. Will it move anyone away from Trump’s avid base of supporters? Hardly. Again, they have no expectation of intellectual or moral honesty from the president.

Do not consider me to be naive, but I always have wanted — and expected — presidents to be better than the rest of us. I long have looked up to the men who have sat in that chair behind the Resolute Desk. I was born during the Truman years, but since the days of President Eisenhower — the man I first remembered as our nation’s leader — I have thought well enough of each man that they have earned my respect.

Until now.

Donald Trump has squandered that respect. He frittered it away from the years he spent as a reality TV celebrity and as a flimflam real estate mogul.

Then he became president. Jeez, I am having trouble even acknowledging these days that he was “elected” to the office. I digress. Back to my point.

Donald Trump has set the expectations for his behavior to a level I do not recognize. It’s not that I want him to reach higher. I know better than to expect the impossible to occur.

Joe Biden isn’t the perfect alternative to Donald Trump. Based on his own sense of decency and his ability and willingness to tell us the truth even when it hurts, he has earned my support.

Just maybe Joe Biden can hoist that expectations bar to a more rational, respectable and customary level.

national news

Why sit on this news?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I didn’t originate this thought, but I want to forward it to you on this blog?

A good friend of mine wonders why Bob Woodward, the esteemed Washington Post reporter and editor, didn’t tell the world in February what Donald Trump told him in the moment: that he knew the COVID crisis could be deadly, but he kept it from us because he didn’t want to “cause panic.”

Woodward tells us in an upcoming book titled “Rage” that Trump knew all along that the pandemic could kill a lot of folks, but decided to downplay it.

As my friend wonders, that was in February. Now we know what Woodward knew back then. That was 191,000 American deaths ago from the COVID-19 virus.

Hmm. That is a fascinating matter to ponder.

I do hope that when Woodward hits the TV news interview circuit to talk up his book that the talking heads have the good sense to ask him why he sat on that news for as long as he did … and whether he is as complicit in the deaths that have occurred as Donald Trump!

national news

Trump is all the ‘Rage’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Robert Woodward practically needs no introduction.

He is a legendary journalist who, with the equally legendary Carl Bernstein, produced a body of work that resulted in the near impeachment and resignation on an American president.

So now he has sat down with Donald Trump and is about to release a new book called “Rage.” What did Trump tell Woodward … to his face? Oh, just that he knew in February that the coronavirus pandemic was serious and could kill thousands of people but that he kept that information from the public.

Trump told Woodward, “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

OK, there you go. Donald Trump took an oath to protect Americans. He has admitted to Robert Woodward that he welshed on that promise. On purpose!

How in the world is Trump going to defend this once the book is published? Oh, I know. He’ll say Woodward made the quotes up, that he never said it and that the legendary journalist is a practitioner of “fake news.”

To think as well that millions of Americans will buy into the president’s ridiculous denial!

International news

Nobel Peace Prize for Trump? Eek!

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Here we go!

Donald Trump has been nominated officially for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination comes from a right-wing Norwegian politician who thinks the U.S.-brokered peace deal with Israel and the United Arab Emirates is just, well, the greatest thing to happen this year on Earth.

As you can imagine, U.S. conservatives are excited about it; U.S. liberals are, shall we say, aghast. And you no doubt can guess that the Twitter-verse went bonkers over the nomination. Trump went nuts, too, according to The Hill: Trump shared the news of the nomination in at least 15 different tweets and retweets with his nearly 87 million followers on social media.

Count me as one of those who is horrified at the prospect of Trump getting this award.

You see, here is what I project happening. Trump’s political campaign is going to use the nomination as grist to pitch for his re-election. Then we’ll have to hear from Trump himself bragging about it.

Take this to the bank, too: He’ll just have to mention the Peace Prize that President Obama received at the beginning of his two terms in office. Obama himself has noted that the award at the time seemed a good bit, um, premature. The Nobel Committee, though, sought to honor the new president on the hope that he would bring worldwide peace. I am willing and able to acknowledge that President Obama didn’t leave us a more peaceful world when he exited his office in January 2017.

I just want this election to arrive on time. I want Donald Trump to be gone. I no longer want to hear his voice. Nor do I want to see his puss on my TV screen.

And I certainly do not want to hear him yammering and yapping about a Peace Prize nomination. Hey, maybe he’ll talk the Nobel committee out of awarding it to him just because of his incessant blathering.

national news

Most important election … ever!

2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have reached a conclusion that others reached a long time ago, but it’s a big deal to me, so I am going to explain what it is and why it’s such a big deal.

The conclusion is that we are going to conduct the most important presidential election in at least the past century. Donald Trump v. Joe Biden is as big a deal as any I have seen since I’ve been voting and I suspect some even older folks would agree.

What’s at stake? I believe the size and gravity of the stakes make this election so incredibly critical. The stakes, simply put are the survival of our system of government.

In 2016, Donald Trump parlayed a desire for radical change in the way we govern into a fluky Electoral College victory. Roughly 77,000 voters in three Rust Belt states gave Trump the Electoral College margin he needed to win.

He said he would be “unconventional” and that he “alone” would solve our problems. He delivered on the first thing. As for the solution, he “alone” has made them worse.

Trump has lied and lied again and again. About everything. He has put unqualified individuals in key advisory roles; e.g., Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. He has burned through national security advisers and White House chiefs of staff. Trump has made a mess of everything he has touched.

He has fomented conspiracy theories. He has called Nazis and Klansmen “fine people.” He has appealed only to his base of fervent supporters.

The experiment in unconventionality has failed.

Joe Biden represents a return to normal governance, to what the late John McCain would call “regular order.” Biden is campaigning to restore our national soul. It needs restoration. Our soul has been damaged, but not destroyed, by Donald Trump and his hideous conduct.

I am a good government kind of guy. I much prefer my presidents to be better than I am. I want them to set moral examples. Biden represents a return to an era of good government. He spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as vice president.

Joe Biden knows how to govern. He is an ardent student of the government in which he has been a significant participant. Yes, I believe Joe Biden can restore our national soul and more importantly, revive our standing as the world’s most indispensable nation.

Thus, we are going to conduct the most significant election in anyone’s memory. It is, as Biden himself once said, a “big fu**ing deal.” 

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 86: Reading lips? Really?

4 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

TYLER STATE PARK, Texas — Spare me the derisive laughter when I reveal the latest wonderment involving Toby the Puppy.

I was sitting in our recreational vehicle; the air conditioner was blasting cool air throughout the RV. It was making a lot of noise.

Toby was lying on the floor next to the bed in our bedroom. He and I made eye contact. Then I turned to my wife and I whispered to her: Do you think we should take Puppy for a walk?

As the Almighty is my witness, the moment I said the word “walk,” Toby jumped up and ran toward us. His tail was wagging. He wanted to go on a walk through the Tyler State Park campground.

My wife offered a potentially plausible explanation for what we both witnessed, which was that Toby is blessed with exceptional hearing. I won’t accept her rational thinking … just yet.

I want to make it abundantly clear that I spoke to my wife in that moment in a voice that couldn’t possibly be heard above the roar of the A/C. Yet our puppy responded immediately after watching me say the operative word.

Not long after Toby the Puppy joined our family, my wife and I learned to avoid saying certain words in his presence unless we were prepared to act on what we had just said. In other words we didn’t say the word “walk” unless we intended to it in the moment.

It’s a good think we could act on it when I mouthed the word “walk.”

I will take greater care from this day forward.

media news

Growing city needs strong newspaper

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I was speaking the other day to a member of my family; we were talking about two issues simultaneously: the growth and maturation of Amarillo, Texas, and the long, slow and agonizing demise of the newspaper that formerly served the community.

It occurred to me later that both trends work at cross purposes. I find myself asking: How does a community grow and prosper without a newspaper telling its story?

That is what is happening in Amarillo, I told my family member.

The city’s downtown district is changing weekly. New businesses open. The city is revamping and restoring long dilapidated structures. Amarillo has a successful minor-league baseball franchise playing ball in a shiny new stadium in the heart of its downtown district.

The city’s medical complex is growing, adding hundreds of jobs annually. Pantex, the massive nuclear weapons storage plant, continues its work. Bell/Textron’s aircraft assembly plant continues to turn out V-22 Ospreys and other rotary-wing aircraft. Streets and highways are under repair and improvement.

Amarillo is coming of age. Its population has exceeded 200,000 residents.

What, though, is happening to the media that tell the story of the community? I can speak only of the newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for nearly 18 years before walking away during a corporate reorganization of the newspaper. The company that owned the G-N for more than 40 years sold its group of papers … and then got out of the newspaper publishing business. It gave up the fight in a changing media market.

The newspaper’s health has deteriorated dramatically in the years since then. Two general assignment reporters cover the community. That’s it. Two! The paper has zero photographers and a single sports writer.

The paper is printed in Lubbock. It has a regional executive editor who splits her time between Amarillo and Lubbock and a regional director of commentary who does the same thing.

There exists, therefore, a serious dichotomy in play in a growing and increasingly vibrant community. I see the contradiction in the absence of a growing and vibrant newspaper that tells the whole story about what is happening in the community it is supposed to cover.

Spare me the “it’s happening everywhere” canard. I get that. I have seen it. None of that makes it any easier to witness it happening in a community I grew to love while I worked there. I built a home there and sought to offer critical analysis of the community from my perch as editor of the Globe-News editorial page.

I do not see that happening these days.

Meanwhile, Amarillo continues to grow and prosper. If only it had a newspaper on hand to tell its story to the rest of the world.

national news

Trump’s America: a dangerous place

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

These Twitter messages illustrate rather nicely, in my oh-so-humble view, where Donald Trump’s re-election campaign breaks down.

The top tweet comes from someone quoting Vice President Mike Pence. You can see Pence’s message. Hold that thought.

The message from Ronald Klain offers a damning testimony to the reality of the moment. Klain, I should add, served on Vice President Biden’s staff in the Obama administration … so he has an axe to grind.

Klain does bring to light what should be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain in their noggin. The coronavirus pandemic has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. The death and illness counts are climbing dramatically. They’re still going up and up. Why?

Well, because the Trump administration refused to act decisively when the pandemic arrived. He has been running a scattershot operation. He contradicts the advice of his handpicked medical experts on measures needed to stem the sickness and death rate.

Oh, and then there’s the civil unrest, the turmoil, the deaths of black Americans at the hands — and knees — of some rogue cops.

Is this a safe America? Is this the kind of nation we need to preserve with the re-election of Donald Trump? Hardly.

And yet the Trumpkin Corps keeps harping about how the United States will head straight to hell if Americans elect Joe Biden as president. Are you kidding me?

media news

Is anonymity worth it?

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am coming down with a touch of a headache watching and following the The Atlantic Monthly magazine’s story on whether Donald Trump referred to military personnel as “suckers and losers.”

First of all, I take my hat off to editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg for some first-class reporting on statements attributed to Trump as he denigrates the service of men and women who have been injured or killed in battle.

Here’s where the head starts throbbing.

He uses four anonymous sources. Not one of them was willing to put his or her name on what he or she heard Trump say. Goldberg stands behind his decision to protect their identity. He said he knows who they are, their names and perhaps even their loved ones’ names, too.

He believes what they told him. Frankly, so do I, based on what I have read; that includes The Atlantic story, which I have read three times.

I confess to some discomfort over keeping their identities secret. I never was able to grant anonymity to news sources while I was working for daily newspapers. I always believed that if someone had something to say, they should offer their names to enable the public to judge the veracity of the story they were telling.

If I had been in charge of The Atlantic and a reporter (in this case, Goldberg is editor in chief of the magazine) came to me with anonymous sources, I likely would insist they allow their names to be published along with the tale they were telling.

Then again, you get a story — a once-a-career kind of story — that is so compelling that the only way the source will talk to you is if you offer him or her anonymity.

That might have been part of Goldberg’s calculation as he prepared the story for publication. If that’s the case, then I respect his decision to grant anonymity to his sources. Goldberg’s journalistic reputation is stellar enough for me to believe him when he endorses their credibility.

Take my word for this final point: No journalist worth a damn is going to pi** away a career for the sake of a fake story.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience