Yes, bring on the vaccine!

December 10, 2020 kanelis2012 1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am astonished to learn that about one-third of Americans polled say they wouldn’t take a COVID vaccine if it is offered to them.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that two-thirds of us would take it.

You may count me as one American who is ready and more than willing to take the shot in my arm when it becomes available to folks such as me.

I am an elderly American. However, I suffer from zero pre-existing conditions. Which means I am a bit down the list of recipients. That’s OK. I am fine with that. The first responders need it now, as do nursing home residents.

Pfizer and Moderna both boast of 95 percent efficacy in their proposed vaccines. From what I have heard that is an exceptional success rate. Docs are calling it “extraordinary.” That is good enough for me.

I want to take the vaccine. I have long been a proponent of mandatory vaccines for children. I took them all as a kid because Mom and Dad insisted I become immunized against childhood illness. I passed that insistence on to my own sons when they were in school.

An anxious nation awaits Food and Drug Administration approval of the Pfizer vaccine. I am one anxious American. If the FDA gives it a “go,” and if the drug firm is able to get it distributed, I will wait patiently for my turn.

When they call my name, I will be there to take the vaccine.

Uncategorized

Oh, the post-Trump era awaits

December 10, 2020 kanelis2012 1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am staring straight into the face of a serious quandary.

What in the word am I going to do when Donald Trump exits the political stage on Jan. 20?

He’ll actually be out of the White House before then — more than likely. Trump won’t have the good manners or sense of decorum to attend President Biden’s inaugural. He’ll be sitting somewhere off-site, no doubt with his Twitter fingers itching to say something, anything derogatory about the new president.

That is going to leave bloggers and other commentators such as me without the grist on which we have relied since the day Donald and Melania Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce that The Donald was running for president.

Good gawd, it’s been a hideous period since then. However, it has given High Plains Blogger plenty of material on which to comment.

Now comes President Biden. Boring ol’ Joe. He’s such a regular guy. He’s a product of public service, having served in the public eye since before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972.

Joe Biden stands in stark contrast to the background that Donald Trump brought to the only public office he ever sought. Biden wants to serve the public. He puts others’ interests ahead of his own. He knows about “regular order” in the Senate and plans to insist on it as president.

Biden won’t be firing angry Twitter messages at all hours of the day and night. He likely won’t fire Cabinet members who displease him simply by contradicting some wild statements he might make.

Folks, we are re-entering a time of political norms that have been plowed asunder by the ghastly whims of Donald Trump.

What to do? I pledge to look at policy pronouncements that come from the president, or from his senior Cabinet leaders, or from Republicans and Democrats in Congress who will serve with Joe Biden as partners in the complex federal government.

I will seek to resist the temptation to blast those who make preposterous statements … although I cannot possibly make an ironclad promise to never speak ill of them.

As for the 45th president. He becomes irrelevant in my eyes on Jan. 20 … if not sooner!

legal news

Sanity must prevail … or else

December 10, 2020 kanelis2012

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am a firm believer in judicial sanity, which is to say that sane minds are likely to prevail in the face of insane legal challenges.

Thus, we have a U.S. Supreme Court roster of justices who will get to decide whether a lawsuit brought forward by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has merit and is worth hearing.

Judicial sanity would seem to dictate that this is a slam dunk for the nation’s highest court. It should toss the matter aside. My hope for the sake of judicial sanity prevailing is that it does so with a terse statement that says in effect: Texas has no standing to bring this case to this court.

Paxton, who appears to be a lousy lawyer, wants the SCOTUS to overturn the results of four states that voted Nov. 3 for President-elect Joe Biden. From the get-go my question has been this: How in the name of election meddling can one state purport to intervene in the electoral affairs of another state?

Therein might lie the case for judicial sanity presenting itself. The high court should tell AG Paxton to mind his own bee’s wax and butt the hell out. He cannot bring a lawsuit against four states that all have certified the results of their presidential balloting results.

I would say that sanity is a sure thing to prevail, except for this: 17 states’ attorneys general have joined Paxton’s clown show and signed on as intervenors in this idiotic lawsuit. All the AGs have swilled the Donald Trump Kool-Aid and are seeking — and this is as rich as it gets — to overturn the legitimate electoral results of a free and fair election.

I believe in the U.S. Constitution. I believe in the power of reason. I continue to believe that judicial sanity is going to have the final say on this profoundly un-American legal challenge.

national news

Baptist preacher a Marxist? Huh?

December 10, 2020 kanelis2012

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler is cracking me up … except that I ain’t laughing.

She is running for election to a seat in Georgia against the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who happens to be the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached to his congregation.

Loeffler brands Warnock as a Marxist sympathizer.

Hold on! Marxism is a philosophy that espouses the notion that God does not exist. Thus, it seems more than a bit of a stretch to suggest that an ordained Baptist preacher — a fellow who speaks to his flock about the love of Jesus Christ — could also sympathize with a God-less society endorsed by Karl Marx.

How does that work. Sen. Loeffler?

national news

Trump testing faith in strength of U.S. Constitution

December 10, 2020 kanelis2012 2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump is testing my resolve, my belief in the strength of the U.S. Constitution.

I don’t expect that faith to collapse. I do not expect the defeated president to prevail in his effort to undermine, subvert and destroy our democratic form of government.

I say all that, though, while expressing concern about the course this post-election fire fight is going. It’s making me nervous.

Seventeen states joined the moronic Texas lawsuit that seeks to overturn the election results of four states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden. They’re all states that voted for Trump. They all are governed by those with the same imbecilic view that the election was stolen from Trump by “widespread vote fraud.”

Dammit to hell! There was no such thing! Joe Biden won a free, fair and honest election. Fair and square! If the U.S. attorney general, William Barr — who’s served as Trump’s water carrier — says so, then it must be true. Isn’t that right?

Donald Trump is making a shambles of this transition, which historically has been done without malice, with no outward anger. Not this time. Trump is clinging desperately to an illusion and he’s making a mockery of our sacred political institutions.

Moreover, he is embarrassing the nation he was elected in 2016 to govern. Our allies are laughing at us; our foes are relishing the confusion and discord he is sowing.

This likely will end OK. Joe Biden will take the presidential oath on Jan. 20. He will get to work. I am less confident today than I was a few days or weeks ago about the outcome of this protracted battle. I retain my faith in the U.S. Constitution and the sturdiness of the framework that our founders built.

But … dang! Donald Trump is making it harder to maintain my eternal optimism.

legal news

D’oh! It’s about a pardon?

December 9, 2020 kanelis2012 2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am just slapping myself upside my own noggin.

Two blog posts have commented on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s goofy lawsuit that seeks to overturn the presidential election results in four states that President-elect Joe Biden won over Donald Trump: Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Now comes the chatter over the GOP Texas AG’s lawsuit. The dipsh** is angling for a pardon from Trump.

D’oh! Why didn’t I snap to that conclusion.

The FBI is investigating Paxton on allegations leveled by former top legal aides in the Texas AG’s office. They contend that Paxton broke the law by dishing out favors for a key political crony/ally/contributor. In come the feds to look more closely at the allegations. Trump, of course, has the power to grant a full pardon for any federal crime or suspicion of a federal crime.

That might explain why Paxton is launching this idiotic legal challenge. I have yet to see a serious legal or constitutional scholar suggest that the challenge Paxton is mounting has an ounce of legal merit. They have labeled it everything from a fishing expedition to a publicity stunt.

There well might be a pardon in the Texas attorney general’s future if Donald Trump gives a damn about what Ken Paxton is trying to do.

Reprehensible!

national news

Country already scored a ‘victory’

December 9, 2020 kanelis2012 2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump fired off this Twitter message today …

“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!”

The “Texas … case” to which Trump referred is the moronic lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that seeks to overturn the duly cast votes in four states in the presidential election.

It’s not clear to anyone how Trump plans to “intervene,” whether as an individual or as a spokesman for his failed re-election campaign.

I just want to add this: The nation already got the “victory” it needed when it elected Joe Biden as its next president.

legal news, political news, State news

Paxton seeks to bask in some perverse glory

December 9, 2020 kanelis2012 2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have concluded, based on zero hard data and only on my inherent bias that I admit to freely, that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is hellbent on making a spectacle of himself.

He seeks to bask in some sort of perverse glory derived from Donald Trump’s idiotic pursuit of “widespread voter fraud” where none exists. Thus, Paxton has filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to overturn the free and fair election results in four states that cast most of their votes for President-elect Joe Biden in the just completed presidential election.

Paxton’s alleged “logic” is beyond belief.

He says the four states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — changed their voting rules in an unconstitutional fashion by allowing more voters to cast their ballots using the U.S. Postal Service. He wants the high court, therefore, to toss out those states’ election returns.

To its credit, the SCOTUS — with three justices nominated by Donald Trump already aboard — has declared already that another lawsuit brought by a Pennsylvania GOP member of Congress has no merit; it has tossed it aside with a single-sentence ruling.

So what the hell is Paxton trying to do here? I mean, the dude already is in trouble already. He is awaiting trial in Texas courts for securities fraud allegations. He also is being investigated by the FBI for allegedly doing favors illegally for a campaign donor. Seven key legal aides have quit or been fired by the AG after they blew the whistle on what they allege is illegal conduct.

The word on Paxton is that he was a mediocre lawyer prior to his election to the Texas Legislature, where he didn’t distinguish himself as the author of much key legislation. Then he got elected Texas AG in 2014 and was almost immediately showered with suspicion when a Collin County grand jury indicted him for securities fraud.

Now this? The AG must have a screw loose.

Let me be as clear as possible: Joe Biden won the election; there is no evidence of the kind of “widespread” fraud that Trump and his Trumpster Team allege. Even the U.S. attorney general, William Barr, has reached that conclusion.

Ken Paxton needs to stop meddling in other states’ affairs.

legal news

‘Yes’ on lifetime appointments!

December 9, 2020 kanelis2012

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s shout out a cheer for the U.S. Supreme Court and the Constitution that allows its justices to receive lifetime appointments as part of the federal judicial branch of government.

The court has tossed out with little comment yet another frivolous lawsuit that sought to get the Pennsylvania legislature to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The suit, brought by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, wants to hand Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden, who won them in a free and fair election on Nov. 3.

What is so gratifying is that the high court ruled unanimously against the complaint brought by the Trumpkin Kelly. That means Trump’s three appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — ruled against The Donald.

Hey, this is a big deal. Why? Because Trump declared it essential to have a nine-member court seated to enable him to win a close call in any complaint brought to challenge the results of the election.

Well, it wasn’t a close call. The justices, all of them, saw fit to toss this latest complaint onto the scrap heap where it belongs.

Yes, the nation’s founders had the right idea when they established a judiciary that should be as free as possible from political pressure.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience