No surprise that Trump would praise Putin

Does anyone really profess to be surprised or amazed that Donald Trump would heap praise on Vladimir Putin over his attempted takeover of a sovereign nation?

Donald, let us remember, once referred to North Korean Marxist dictator Kim Jong Un as a “smart cookie,” and professed to have “fallen in love” with the guy who starves his people to death while living in luxury and spending lots of money developing nuclear weapons.

He also has lamented how strongmen in other countries get tons of praise from local media, apparently ignoring the obvious fact that the government in those countries control the media; that ain’t the case in the United States of America, where the nation’s founders took great care to ensure that the media are free of government interference.

Now he calls his pal Vlad’s declaring the independence of two breakaway Ukraine provinces “savvy” for making that statement. All Putin did was provoke President Biden into invoking economic sanctions against Russia.

Yeah, Donald loves dictators. He wishes he could become one of them. Indeed, he made an effort at it on 1/6 in his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The dipsh** should be heading for prison.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Lefty tells truth, then walks it back

Phil Mickelson has me officially puzzled. The Hall of Fame golfer known as Lefty to his fans and fellow golf pros, wants to do business with a nation he described in an interview as “crazy motherfu**ers” who kill people who disagree with their politics and scorn those who are gay.

Now he says his context were “taken out of context” and published without his consent. He apologized to Saudi Arabia, which has launched a pro golf tour that is going to compete with the PGA; Mickelson wants to join the Saudis, even though he said those astonishing things about them.

Which is it, Lefty? Are you in with those folks?

I guess I am left to wonder two things. Why would Mickelson, a six-time major golf tournament winner and one of the best ever to play the game, do business with those he scorns in the manner that he did? Moreover, in this social media age, doesn’t Mickelson realize that virtually nothing is “off the record” and that anything he says now is considered fair game?

This is not Mickelson’s finest hour. He has drawn harsh criticism from fellow golf pros, the PGA … not to mention the Saudi government.

Here’s the thing, though. Mickelson told the truth about the Saudis. As the saying goes, however, many times the “truth hurts.” In this case, it has hurt the guy who spoke it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Now he’s just ‘Donald’

I have made a command decision on my blog. Future references to Donald J. Trump are going to be limited to just use of his first name.

Yes, I will hereby make initial references to the former Liar in Chief using his first and last name; subsequent references will be simply “Trump” or “Donald.” I think I’ll stick with “Donald” most of the time.

Hey, I can make that decision regarding my blog. Because it is my blog.

I refused during his term in office to link the terms “President” and “Trump” consecutively; I have held true to that just now, if you get my drift.

Therefore, I am no longer going to use the term “former president,” or “ex-president,” or even “former POTUS” to describe Donald in the future. He doesn’t deserve any sort of respect. He won’t get it from me.

I hope to dial back the frequency of blog posts referring to Donald. I’ll do my best to be more selective.

Hang with me, OK? Thanks. Now … let’s go on down the road together.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Keep blathering about vote fraud … Donald

You know what? I think I am going to offer Donald J. Trump some campaign advice going into the upcoming election season — and I don’t mean the 2022 midterm election, but rather the 2024 presidential election.

It is this: Go ahead, Donald, and keep yapping about the “stolen” election in which you lost to President Biden. Please, keep reminding Americans of all political stripes what a complete ass you have made of yourself by (a) not conceding defeat in a free, fair and legal election and (b) questioning the integrity of an electoral system run at the local level by dedicated public servants.

Trump keeps repeating The Big Lie. Great! Go for it, Donald! Your resistance to forgetting the past kinda reminds me of how Ann Richards lost her re-election bid for Texas governor back in 1994. A novice pol named George W. Bush defeated Richards by staying focused on his campaign talking points, as well as by the incumbent governor’s own refusal to offer a vision on how she would govern the state for the next four years.

I recall well how it was watching that campaign unfold. Richards sought to live on the laurels of her election in 1990 in a race she was supposed to lose to Midland oil mogul Clayton Williams, who then destroyed his own campaign through a major gaffe about comparing rape to the bad weather, suggesting women should just “relax and enjoy it.”

So, we fast-forward to today and we hear Trump continuing to yap, yowl and yammer about “massive voter fraud” that did not exist in 2020. It didn’t. Honest! It was fair and legal. Just like the folks assigned to protect its security promised it would be.

Trump, though, keeps living in the past. He keeps reciting The Big Lie. He keeps losing court battles over myriad issues and legal challenges.

Stay with it, Donald. If it makes you feel like you’re going to win the hearts and minds of voters whose support you would need in your futile and feckless attempt to get back into office, then … what the hell?

Go for it! Few things would make me happier than to watch your political career go down in flames.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Putin’s launches frightening power quest

Vladimir Putin’s lust for power is an astonishing sight to behold as the world awaits what appears to be coming: a violent invasion of a sovereign nation.

The Russian dictator is concocting excuses to invade Ukraine, a nation that once belonged to the Soviet Union’s empire of states, but which has established itself as an important independent nation on the western border of what is now the Russian Federation.

Putin wants it back. He appears set to send in the armed forces on a beeline to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city. He believes he will take control of the city of 2.8 million residents in short order. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

President Biden has done a good job of gathering allied support in leveling stern and damaging economic sanctions against Putin and the Russian economy. Germany has announced plans to shut down a natural gas pipeline from Russia, which is going to inflict serious harm to Putin’s nation. Biden is set to lower the economic boom on Russia as well, now that the window for a diplomatic solution appears to be closing rapidly.

Through it all, though, we have Vladimir Putin not giving a damn about what all this means to his people, to his standing among world leaders or to his legacy. He’s a bad dude to be sure.

Putin’s history of evil intent is clear, as he once led the Soviet spy agency, the KGB, during the Cold War. Thus, reports that he plans to enact some sort of “ethnic cleansing” in Ukraine if his troops take over the country should not surprise anyone.

I know there isn’t a damn thing on Earth I can do about any of this, other than to express my extreme displeasure over the danger that this tinhorn despot is able to place on the world we all inhabit.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Who is Vlad Putin?

Just as I vowed when he got elected U.S. president that I wouldn’t link the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively, I am having similar pangs to resist using the term “president” to refer to Vladimir Putin, the goon and deep-cover spy who runs Russia.

Vladimir Putin is a thug. He is a killer. He once ran the KGB, the Soviet Union’s spy agency. He’s a bad dude. As in really, really bad, man.

Yeah, he has been elected president. Do you believe those elections were as free and fair as those we conduct in this country? Hell, no! Putin has rewritten the rules to in effect make himself a lifetime leader.

His “rigging” of elections in Russia makes me wonder something about his best American pal, Donald J. Trump. Why hasn’t Trump bellowed and blustered about how the Russians rig their elections, rather than denigrating the U.S. electoral system? If the ex-Liar in Chief wants an example of corrupt elections, he needs to focus his fire on how the Russians keep electing Putin. Oh, wait. Trump wanted to become friends with Putin, and he cannot be Vlad’s BFF by criticizing the system that keeps returning him to power in the Kremlin.

I believe I’ll keep resisting using the term “president” to refer to the Russian leader. “President” is a title I reserve for legitimately elected leaders or leaders who don’t bring shame and disgust to their high office. Donald Trump fits the latter description to a “t” and there’s nothing legit about how Vladimir Putin attained the office he now occupies.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

Will sanctions hurt Putin?

Jimmy Carter usually opposes U.S. imposition of sanctions on other nations, believing that such action hurts innocent citizens of the countries we intend to punish. With all due respect to the former president, I am going to wish that sanctions we deliver to Russia when that nation goes to war with Ukraine deliver maximum pain to the country, but more importantly to its leader.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin today announced he recognizes two Ukrainian provinces as being “independent.” The decision prompted President Biden to levy limited sanctions involving those breakaway provinces. There will be more — much more — to come the moment Putin orders the tanks and troops to march in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

Biden is caught in a bit of a bind. There can be no way on Earth he can send U.S. troops into battle with the Russians, even though he has dispatched several thousand American forces to eastern Europe. The only option we have is to levy severe and punishing sanctions on Russia, which Biden pledges to do.

What do those sanctions look like? I suppose it would involve freezing of Russian assets in banks around the world, presuming President Biden has enlisted the support of our worldwide allies. They should involve the freezing of Putin’s personal assets. There well could be suspension of oil and natural gas shipments to western Europe from Russia, which would take a huge bite out of Russia’s third-world economy. There needs to be a suspension of technology exports to Russia from this country and from the European Union.

Will any of this dissuade Putin from carrying out his ambition to bring Ukraine back under Russian control? Probably not. He just needs to pay dearly for his adventurism.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Russians have pals … on the right!

OK, let me see if I have this correct. The Republican Party that once vilified Russians as being part of an Evil Empire, whose president once muttered into an open mic that he would launch missiles at the Soviet Union in “five minutes,” and who kept their grip on power by refusing to give the enemy any quarter is now in bed with the latest Russian dictator.

GOP members of Congress along with their friends in the right-wing media are criticizing President Biden’s actions against the Russians, contending that Ukraine is the real villain in the growing crisis in Europe.

Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush 41 are spinning in their graves at this moment.

We are hearing next to nothing from the right-wingers among us criticizing the actions of Vladimir Putin, who is threatening all-out war against Ukraine. The nut jobs on the right instead are criticizing the Democratic U.S. president for, um, threatening to levy stiff, punishing sanctions on Russians if they launch an invasion of Ukraine.

Those of us who remember the Cold War also remember a time when GOP politicians took great pride in standing firm against tyrants such as those who ruled the Soviet Union, which later returned to just being ol’ Russia after the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. Yes, some of expressed hope then that Russia would follow the model set by the United States and many nations in western Europe. Alas, it didn’t happen. We are dealing now with yet another strongman in the form of Putin, who has declared that the fall of the USSR was his country’s darkest historic moment.

What in the world am I missing here?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Still pulling for POTUS

No one who reads this blog regularly will be surprised to read that I want President Joe Biden to succeed as he trudges through his term in office. I hope it is just his first term … but that remains an open question, to be crystal clear.

I am not going to presume that the president will even seek a second term, let alone that he’ll win election to another four years in the White House.

He came into office promising to (a) end the pandemic, (b) restore the “soul of the nation” and (c) get our economy moving again. I am going to give the president credit for achieving one of those ambitious goals and part of another one.

The economy is stronger than many of us seem to believe it is. Polling suggests Americans remain concerned about the economic track we’re on. I am unclear as to why there remains such uncertainty and angst. I know about inflationary pressures; we’re feeling them in our North Texas home, too. The job numbers continue to sparkle, unemployment continues to decline and we’re buying more goods and services.

The national soul restoration remains a work in progress. Sadly, we’re still being infected with disinformation peddled by Biden’s immediate predecessor. The Big Lie still has legs, although most of its limbs have been cut off by the judicial system that keeps undercutting POTUS 45’s efforts to undermine the integrity of our electoral system. Biden, though, has sought to return the United States to its role as leader of alliances and protector of civil liberties around the world. He’s done well in that regard, dispensing with the gratuitous criticism of our allies.

Yes, the pandemic remains a problem. But its drag on our national psyche is dwindling right along with the infection rates, the hospitalizations and the deaths from COVID infection. States are relaxing their mandates on masks and other precautions. I am not heeding Texas’s relaxation efforts. We are still masking up and are still keeping our distance from those we do not know.

I am continuing to pull for President Biden to keep up the fight and to score more successes as he moves along through his term. You know already he wasn’t my first choice to defeat the man who held the office for four previous years. Then he became the Democratic Party nominee in 2020 … and I was all in.

I remain all in. Keep the faith, Mr. President.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A lockup in Trump’s future?

I am trying to imagine what I thought not so long ago was an impossible ending to a former president’s legal difficulty, but which is be. ginning to look entirely possible … although not yet probable.

It is that Donald Trump might face a criminal indictment on multiple fronts. For tax fraud. For interfering in a state election. For violating a federal law designed to protect national security. Hmm. I might have missed something, but you get the picture … yes?

Trump’s business already is under indictment for multiple allegations, including tax fraud; the Manhattan (N.Y.) district attorney’s office alleges that his business inflated the cost of real estate to get sweeter loan deals. No can do, folks.

The Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney is examining whether Trump broke the law by pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes to swing Georgia from the Joe Biden win column to Trump; hey, we have that act on recording.

The latest might be the most serious of all, in that the National Archives has alleged that Trump spirited classified documents from the White House and stashed them in Mar-a-Lago, Fla., where Donald and Melania Trump live; the Presidential Records Act expressly forbids such thievery of national security documents.

All told, if Trump is indicted and convicted of these crimes, he faces a lengthy prison term.

Isn’t that just rich?

And I haven’t mentioned — until this very moment — the House select panel looking into the 1/6 insurrection incited by Trump on that terrible day just two weeks before he left office.

Moreover, we’re beginning to find out that Donald Trump — who boasted of his fantastic business acumen — isn’t nearly as rich as he bragged about being. That, folks, doesn’t surprise me in the least. I always have said — and I have said so here — that people who are rich and smart don’t boast about it. That the ex-POTUS would keep yapping about his wealth and his smarts only tells me he is neither as rich or as smart as he wants to believe.

The most maddening aspect of this moron’s trail of idiocy is that he continues to have this weird hold on Republican Party voters’ skulls.

But … let’s allow the legal process to play out. I can wait.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience