national news

Liz Cheney: My new hero

(Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Man, it is hard to believe that I am actually pulling for Liz Cheney to fend off this idiotic challenge to her leadership post within the House Republican leadership hierarchy.

The Wyoming lawmaker is being vilified by the Trumpkins who have seized control of the party. Her offense? For voting to impeach Donald J. Trump after the then-POTUS incited the insurrection against the government as it was certifying the results of the 2020 election that went for President Biden over their guy, Trump.

I wouldn’t vote for Rep. Cheney if I lived in Wyoming. She is too much of a right-winger to suit my taste. On this single matter, I find myself rooting for her to survive the challenge launched by the likes of Trump-loving loons Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

The House GOP caucus has been virtually silent about Gaetz, who’s being investigated for alleged sex trafficking. As for the QAnon queen Greene, I ain’t hearing much worry from the GOP on her, either.

So now we have Liz Cheney trying to fend off the GOP hyenas. I would much rather have a Republican Party that fuels its existence on the basis of policy differences rather than its fealty to a lunatic like Donald Trump.

I’m pulling for Liz Cheney. If she loses her House GOP caucus post, I hope she keeps her throat cleared and continues to tell her colleagues that they are making a terrible mistake in backing the purveyor of The Big Lie.

local news, national security, State news

Border madness must be handled

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am going to concede that conditions on our nation’s southern border need attention, they need serious repair, they need an administration that is willing to get tougher than it has been so far.

A neighbor of mine is a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who is leaving soon for a temporary-duty assignment southeast of Laredo.

He describes the situation on the border as “an out of control mess.”

My neighbor blames President Biden’s administration for it. He didn’t say so directly, but I believe he endorsed the Donald Trump administration policy of rounding up undocumented immigrants, fast-tracking their status while being held and then sending them back to the country from which they fled.

The Biden administration approach is more an “open border” matter. I reminded him that the border isn’t “open” and that Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are stopping illegal immigration every single day.

He acknowledged that but said that the Biden administration’s more tolerant policy is enticing people to flee to this country.

I get that Joe Biden has taken a dramatically different approach to undocumented immigration than the one used by his immediate predecessor. However, I will not accept the notion that our borders are “open” and available for anyone to enter this country.

My neighbor, though, is joining other DPS troopers to assist local and federal law enforcement officials in doing their job. He believes this DPS involvement will last a while, that the situation along our border is too grave to clear up over the short term.

He is a bright young man. I will accept his diagnosis of the problem.

However, I am going to swallow the hook that contends that an “open border policy” is to blame for it.

This matter needs a concerted federal and state effort to resolve. I am going to hold out hope that Gov. Greg Abbott will resist the temptation to hurl blame and insults and will get to working with the president and his team to resolve this matter.

Sports news

Future Hall of Famer gets the axe

Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I don’t follow big-league baseball the way I once did.

My interest lies in too few players these days. One of them, my current favorite MLB player, has been cut from a team he joined a decade ago in one of the biggest deals in baseball history.

I am saddened to see Albert Pujols get the boot from the Los Angeles Angels.

Pujols is, as the saying goes, a serious “gamer.” He comes to play hardball the right way every time he suits up. He also is 41 years of age and his best years are long gone. The Angels believe it would be in the team’s best interest and in Pujols’ best interest to let him find a spot with another team that will enable him to play if not every day, then on most days.

That wasn’t meant to be for the Angels.

Why am I sad? Because a guy with Pujols’ stellar character and all that he has done to promote baseball positive image deserves better than what he got from the LA Angels. Spare me the lecture about how pro sports is big business. I get all that.

Still, an athlete who for the first half of his career playing for the St. Louis Cardinals put up utterly staggering offensive numbers — hits, home runs, runs batted in, batting average — to my mind had earned a more graceful and dignified exit than what he got from the Angels.

It’s unlikely Albert Pujols will put up the kind of offensive numbers he did when he was much younger were he to end up in another lineup. I just wish he could have left the Angels on his own terms.

***

One of the more thrilling scenes I’ve ever watched occurred when the Angels played the Cardinals in 2019. It marked Pujols’ return to St. Louis since he left the team. The reception he got from what he has called “the best fans in baseball” is stunning. Here is the link.

Cardinals fans give Albert Pujols a standing ovation in his return to Busch Stadium – YouTube

national news

McConnell: who needs to govern?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made a startling admission.

He has acknowledged, in effect, that he has no interest in governance. He said that “100 percent of my focus is to block” everything that President Biden wants to do.

There. You got that?

This is the same guy who in 2010 declared that his sole focus was to make Barack H. Obama “a one-term president.” Well, that mission went down in flames, as President Obama was re-elected two years later.

Now the Kentucky Republican has in effect doubled down on his earlier mission statement by saying that he is focused solely on blocking Joe Biden’s agenda.

What, I dare ponder, is Mitch McConnell’s agenda … if he has one.

local news

Princeton set to make another run at home rule

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Will the fifth time be the charm for Princeton, Texas, to establish a home rule charter?

The City Council has decided to call an election for this coming November that will be the first of a two-step process that officials hope will produce a home rule charter for the rapidly growing Collin County community.

The November election would allow the city to proceed with forming a charter committee. Then the panel would draft a charter and present it to voters who then would decide up or down on the charter in May 2022.

This has been an arduous process for the city that is likely to see its population double when they post the 2020 official census figures. The 2010 census put Princeton’s population at 6,807 residents. The next census figures to exceed 13,000 residents. Indeed, City Manager Derek Borg believes the city’s population might triple. 

I happen to live in a subdivision that is still under construction and from my front porch, I see no end in sight to it all.

Still, the city has gone to the voters four times on a home rule charter. It has lost all four times. The city is believed to be the largest in Texas that is governed under what is called “general law,” or laws established by the Legislature.

It’s time for Princeton to assume full control of issues affecting its own population.

Previous efforts at forming a home-rule charter have gone down largely because of fears of involuntary annexation. Well, the 2017 Legislature took care of that by enacting a law that banned cities from annexing property without the property owners’ permission.

According to the Princeton Herald, the first election in November would ask: “Shall a commission be chosen to draft a new charter?” City Attorney David Overcash said the city isn’t constrained by the election to begin work on forming a charter commission. However,  according to the Herald, “If the voters reject the commission proposal in the November election … the commission would dissolve.”

I am one Princeton resident who wants the city to adopt a home-rule charter. It is past time for the city to take command of its affairs and not dance to the dictates of politicians from afar.

Joe Biden

Allegations were all phony

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz says his effort to derail the 2020 presidential election was not about keeping Joe Biden away from the presidency.

It was about answering “unprecedented amount of allegations” about the integrity of the election.

What a crock of sh**!

The allegations all were phony. They were meant to delegitimize President Biden’s election. They were all about the Big Lie that Donald Trump kept fomenting, even after the Electoral College had met and certified the results in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.

Ted Cruz said his election objections weren’t about blocking Biden. Then someone asked about it. (msn.com)

I just am not going to accept any sort of flim-flam coming from the one-time and likely future presidential pretender.

economic news, national news

‘Meager’ jobs report prompts more action? Sure, but wait

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Labor Department produced some relatively desultory job-creation figures this morning.

The private non-farm sector generated “only” 266,000 jobs in April, said the Labor bean counters. There had been projections of a million plus such jobs.

What was the response from President Biden? He said the relatively skimpy job growth means the government must do more to stimulate an economy crushed by the COVID pandemic.

I agree with him … to a point.

The jobs figures signal a need to approve something akin to the infrastructure/family/jobs package that Biden has presented to Congress.

I am not sure that we need to receive yet another round of “stimulus checks” to boost the economy.

Don’t get me wrong. My wife and I appreciate the aid we got from the government already. The $2,400 we received during the last year of the Trump administration and the $2,800 we received shortly after Joe Biden took office both have gone a long way to easing any difficulty in our home.

However, I remain a deficit hawk. I am fearful of the enormous deficits being run up during the current federal budget year. I want there to be more economic aid, but I also want it to come in the form of boosting tax rates for mega-wealthy Americans and corporations who find a way to avoid shouldering their share of the tax burden.

As for the infrastructure portion of the Biden package, by all means let us put people to work building and rebuilding our roads, bridges, airports and seaports. President Biden has thrown out an interesting idea, to re-create the Civilian Conservation Corps established during the Franklin Roosevelt administration as a way to rid the nation of the Great Depression. Let’s have that discussion, too.

I am not panicking just because one month’s job numbers didn’t measure up to what the brainiacs had predicted. I urge our government leaders to avoid pushing the economic pedal to the metal full bore.

Uncategorized

Cheney vs. Stefanik? Weird, man

3 Comments

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have done a little sniffing around about the individual who is likely to succeed U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney as the House Republican Conference chair.

Rep. Elise Stefanik is campaigning hard for the post among her GOP colleagues. She wants to be a leader among House Republicans. She has gotten the endorsement of the ex-POTUS, Donald Trump.

But … why?

Here’s what I have found out. Stefanik is not a mainstream or a Trump conservative. Her sole qualification for the job apparently is that she stuck up for Trump when he got himself in trouble over trying to seek political favors from a foreign government and then for inciting the insurrection.

A quick look at Stefanik’s still-scant congressional record reveals some interesting things.

Conservative political action groups rate her pro-Trump voting record at around 77 percent; Cheney’s is at about 92 percent. You want more? Let’s try these:

Stefanik voted against the Trump tax cut proposal in 2017; she voted in favor of the Equality Act that stood for greater rights for gay Americans; Stefanik opposed Trump’s decision to ban entry into the United States of people coming from certain Muslim countries; Stefanik was one of 14 Republicans to vote with all House Democrats to override Trump’s veto of a measure unwinding the latter’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.

Do you get where I’m going with this? She opposed Trump on several key Trump-supported initiatives. She was decidedly less conservative than Rep. Cheney.

Do you think for a nano-second that Donald Trump gives a rip about such mundane matters as, um, legislation and government policy? Hell no! All he wants is blind loyalty.

He isn’t getting it from Liz Cheney. Elise Stefanik has provided the requisite brown-nosing that the ex-POTUS demands.

A cult of personality? There you have it.

crime news

Feds now involved in Floyd murder

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A Hennepin County, Minn., jury had the good sense and common decency to endorse what we all saw on that ghastly video, which was the sight of Derek Chauvin suffocating George Floyd while arresting him for passing counterfeit money.

They convicted him of second- and third-degree murder and manslaughter. Chauvin faces a lengthy prison term.

4 ex-cops indicted on US civil rights charges in Floyd death (msn.com)

Now, though, comes this bit of news: Chauvin and his three former Minneapolis police colleagues have been indicted by a federal grand jury of violating Floyd’s civil rights when they arrested him and then killed him.

The ordeal ain’t over for Chauvin or for Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao. The three other officers also are awaiting trial in state court for their role in Floyd’s death.

You know the story. Chauvin is a white man; Floyd was an African-American. Floyd’s death drew international attention and helped spawn greater interest in the Black Lives Matter movement.

This case isn’t not about to fade into history any time soon.

Nor, frankly, should it.

national news

First Amendment vs. Facebook

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s take a look at the First Amendment, which has been revived as a talking point with regard to Facebook’s decision to keep Donald J. Trump off the platform for the time being.

Trumpkins keep yammering that Facebook is impinging on Trump’s First Amendment rights of free speech as a U.S. citizen.

Hold on.

The founders inscribed a fairly narrow guarantee when they wrote the First Amendment to our Constitution. They wrote:

“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 

The most important and salient words of that Amendment are the first five of them. “Congress shall make no law … ”

That means Congress is prohibited from interfering in all those freedoms guaranteed by the founders. It says nothing at all about what a private company can do to limit Americans’ expressions. Facebook is a for-profit organization. It has every right to ban whoever it wants from its platform. It chose to act after Donald Trump kept fomenting the Big Lie about the 2020 election, that it was stolen from him. He used Facebook to promote the Big Lie; Facebook gurus decided they would have no more of it.

Does this inhibit Trump’s First Amendment liberty? Not one bit. He can still make whatever statement he chooses, meaning he is free to lie his a** off!

I had many discussions over the years while working in daily journalism with those who challenged my authority as a newspaper editor to disallow them from expressing themselves on our pages. I would reject a submission if it dealt in falsehood. I would tell the author of that decision. The author would respond: “But the First Amendment allows me to say it.”

No, it doesn’t. It does give us all the opportunity to run their own publication and to allow whatever they want to appear on its pages.

So, the fight over the First Amendment continues as Donald Trump and his minions try to make an argument that is as hollow as the lies Trump keeps telling.

The nation’s founders got it right when they said “Congress shall make no law … “

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience