national news

Failed presidency? Hardly!

I have no clue whether President Biden is going to seek a second term in the White House. I hope he does because I now intend to seek to dispel the myth being kicked around that he stands over a “failed presidency.”

Whether he steps away after a single term or manages to win re-election in 2024, I believe Joe Biden can — and will — look at his current term as a successful venture.

One of the more remarkable aspects of Biden’s success has been his ability to achieve it without the kind of bipartisan support many of us — including yours truly — expected he would be able to generate.

The just-enacted Inflation Reduction Act is heading to his desk without a single Republican vote in either congressional chamber. No GOP senators or House members joined Democrats in endorsing a bill that seeks to slow inflation, makes a huge investment in clean/green energy and reduces the cost of prescription drugs.

That the president was able to resurrect a version of Build Back Better — which had been given up for dead — is itself a political miracle.

That was just the president’s latest success. He also was able — with a smattering of GOP help — push through a modest gun control bill in the wake of the Uvalde school and Buffalo supermarket massacres. He had help from GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who worked with Democratic Sen. Patrick Murphy of Connecticut in coming up with a legislative compromise that ends a decades-long stalemate on stemming gun violence.

Biden’s presidential success also must include his ability to muster international support for sanctions against Russia over its lawless, immoral and criminal invasion of Ukraine. NATO and the European Union have stood foursquare with us as Biden has taken measures to punish Russian goon/strongman Vladimir Putin for his criminal behavior.

Has the Biden term been flawless? No, it hasn’t. The most significant policy setback, in my view, has been along our southern border. Then again, the administration has not — as critics have suggested — created an “open-border” policy.

However, I will not accept any argument that Joe Biden has failed in the job to which he was elected.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

There’s no talking to them

I am going to wave a white flag of surrender. I give up. I no longer can — nor will I — seek to persuade the Donald Trump cabal of cultists that they are wrong in clinging to their man’s world view … whatever the hell it is!

Truth be told, I made that decision some time ago. I don’t think I have declared my intention publicly, out loud, for all the world to hear.

I have a few critics of this blog who weigh in when I have something critical to say about their hero. As a general rule, I don’t engage them in debate.

Which brings me to my point: which is that there is no point in arguing with someone whose mind is made up, who does not listen or comprehend what I know to be the truth about their guy.

He is, as Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — a fellow Republican — said in 2016 a “phony” and a “fraud.” He cannot tell the truth. However, the sad reality is that truth-telling doesn’t matter to the cult cabal. They buy into his lies, they repeat them and then dare the rest of us to challenge them. I can challenge the lies, but I cannot challenge the purveyors of the falsehoods.

You’ve heard the saying — or something like it — that warns against trying to talk sense into someone who is blind to any possibility that their guy suffers a fatal flaw. That, in my view, sums up the Trump cabal.

I know what you might be thinking: If I am going to accuse the Trumpkins of being blind to the truth, am I as equally blind to the views expressed on the other side of the great divide?

Not a chance. They are wrong.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Trump’s post-presidency as weird as presidency itself

There can be no denying what it so blatantly obvious, which is that Donald J. Trump’s post-presidency is as weird and chaotic as the presidency itself.

So much of it is because of Trump himself.

Roll it all up into a single stream of thought and you get the picture.

The man never conceded an election he lost; he didn’t attend the inaugural of the man who defeated him; he left the White House the morning of Joe Biden’s inaugural and took classified documents with him to Florida; a congressional committee is examining his role in planning and executing the 1/6 insurrection; he could be charged with felony crimes; he is teasing his cult followers into thinking he might run for the office a third time in 2024; he continues to bash Republicans and Democrats, sowing seeds of distrust and outright hatred among many politicians.

How does this guy ever make it right? He cannot. He refuses to do so.

Will there be a White House ceremony in his future? Hah! He cannot possibly be invited by President Biden to attend, say, an event commemorating the accomplishments of any great American. Trump never says the right thing.

Donald John Trump is an outcast. You know what? I have reason to believe he likes it that way!

Wow!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

How did we do it in the old days?

How in the name of technology did we survive without cell phones? That’s the question I keep asking — rhetorically, of course — as I learn about how school districts are cracking down on students’ packing cell phones into the classroom.

Richardson Independent School District, just down the highway from where my wife and I live, is the latest district to experiment with a plan to force students to lock up their phones before going to school.

I want to applaud Richardson ISD. Indeed, my hope is that school administrators make the ban a permanent one. I also believe school systems all across the country would do well to follow Richardson ISD’s lead.

I’m an old man. I recall the old days when the only way Mom or Dad could contact me in school was to call the school secretary and leave a message. The office staff would get the message to me and I would call back; it was usually Mom who would place the call.

No worries back then.

These days, though, are different. Moms and Dads need to be able to speak immediately to their little darlin’s.

Here’s the thing: Richardson is taking a proactive approach to reducing classroom distractions. Children attend school to learn their lessons. Their parents send them to school to learn as well. Cell phones can be a major distraction, not to mention serving as a tool for bullies and others who would inflict potential harm on those precious children.

I applaud Richardson ISD’s effort to restore a learning environment and I hope other school systems follow suit.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, legal news

Garland’s stock keeps rising

Merrick Garland’s stock keeps appreciating, in my humble view, as he weathers the storm of criticism being heaped on him by the far-right wing of the political horde that awaits some finality in what the U.S. attorney general determines regarding Donald J. Trump.

We have at least one nutjob member of Congress filing impeachment papers against Garland. Why? Because he ordered the search of Trump’s Florida home for classified papers the ex-president squirreled away … illegally!

Right-wing media hounds keep referring to the search as a “raid,” implying that the FBI agents pounced on the former president’s home, behind his back. Good grief! Garland performed this act by the book. It was legal and totally constitutional.

He is defending the agents and others within the Justice Department who have come under fire by the right-wingers who — were they investigating a Democratic former president — would be the darlings of the conservative media.

And I was struck by a particular phrase he used in defending the agents and other DOJ staffers. He declared his pride in “working alongside them.” Think of that for just a moment. There was no self-aggrandizement in that statement, no sense of “they work for me, therefore I am better than they are.” No. He stands shoulder to shoulder with the men and women he calls “patriotic public servants.”

Garland is a stellar public servant himself. I am glad he’s on the job. I also am grateful that President Biden persuaded this top-notch legal mind to stand firm in the face of criticism he had to know was coming his way.

Stand tall, Merrick Garland … and stay strong. The nation needs you.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news, national security

Hard to grasp consequence of probe

I hereby acknowledge the difficulty I am having in trying to wrap my noodle around the events of this week involving Donald J. Trump and the search that revealed what the world has learned he had squirreled away at his luxurious South Florida digs.

A major part of me wants the Justice Department to proceed with all deliberate speed in determining whether the ex-president committed crimes in taking highly sensitive documents out of the White House. My ol’ trick knee, which I acknowledge has been unreliable at times, is telling me that Attorney General Merrick Garland has the goods on The Donald.

His public statement, brief as it was, this week explaining what he approved and then his stout defense of the FBI and DOJ suggested to me that Garland is riled up.

I will offer an admittedly half-hearted salute to Trump for agreeing to allow the search warrant to be unsealed. He is going to play the victim card and his base is going to scarf it up. The rest of us should be prepared for what might be coming … and possibly sooner than we anticipate.

That would be a criminal indictment against a former president of the U.S.A. The charge? I don’t know. Violation of the Espionage Act is one possibility. So is a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

What perhaps is the most glaring mystery to me is trying to determine what in the world Trump expected to do with what the FBI agents recovered. It’s been reported widely that Trump doesn’t read documents. He was infamously impatient with daily national security briefings and never looked — or so we have been told — at the reams of papers his national security staff delivered to him each day.

And did those documents fetched from Mar-a-Lago contain nuclear secrets? If so, then … holy crap!

We know already that some of the documents were of the highest security levels imaginable. And a president cannot just de-classify them because he gives the word.

I maintain my implicit faith in the attorney general’s integrity. What remains to be determined is whether he has the courage to withstand what will be a torrent of rage if he delivers on what I now believe he must … which is a criminal indictment against a former president of the United States.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, environmental news, Joe Biden

Democrats have earned it

President Biden is going to get a bill quite soon that won’t have any Republican votes attached to it. The blunt truth is that I wished for at least a smattering of GOP support from Congress to send the Inflation Reduction Act to the president.

Alas, it didn’t happen. However, I am going to say loudly and clearly that Democrats in the Senate and the House have done well for those of they represent across the land.

House Democrats today stood together to enact the IRA. It seeks to reduce inflation, seeks to reduce carbon emissions, seeks to reduce the cost of drugs.

Republicans, of course, say it doesn’t do anything to help us. I will disagree with their bloviating.

The Inflation Reduction Act represents a significant effort to curb climate change. Indeed, it is this nation’s largest-ever investment to help curb carbon emissions.

I have to ask: Why is that a bad thing?

It’s not a bad thing at all! Republican obstructionists, though, remain bound to their commitment to block anything President Biden and Democrats want to accomplish.

It is to their everlasting shame. Democrats, meanwhile, have earned the nation’s gratitude. They have, as Joe Biden once declared, produced a big fu**ing deal.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Home rule for Princeton … finally?

Well, those who serve us at Princeton City Hall are possibly asking: Will the umpteenth election to create a home-rule charter for the city be the one that sticks to the wall?

Actually, what is coming up on Nov. 8 will be the fifth city charter election for Princeton. Count me as one relatively new Princeton resident who wants the measure to succeed and I intend to vote “yes” when the city presents it in just a few weeks.

The charter has failed four times at the ballot box. Opposition to annexation policies torpedoed previous efforts. The 2017 Legislature took care of that issue by declaring that cities cannot annex property without property owners’ permission.

A citizens committee has been working non-stop for seemingly forever on a draft document. The panel finished the work, and the City Council ordered the election to occur this fall.

The draft city charter has a couple of fascinating aspects that should appeal politically to residents. It sets term limits for council members and the mayor; it also creates single-member districts for four council members. The current council does not have any limits on the number of terms members can serve and the current council also is elected citywide. As the Princeton Herald reported: “No city officer will be able to serve more than eight consecutive years as mayor or council member. A total cap of 16 years of cumulative service will also take effect.” 

I covered — as a freelance reporter for the Farmersville Times — a similar election earlier this year in Farmersville, which also drafted a city charter. That city’s measure passed by a wide margin. My hope for Princeton is that its voters, too, will approve a charter, which to my way of thinking gives the city much greater say in setting the rules by which we all should live. What’s more, there’s a whole lot more of us living in Princeton than there were during previous citywide charter elections.

I have been covering this story as well for KETR-FM radio. I wrote this piece for KETR.org:

Piece of Mind: A Charter For Princeton? (ketr.org)

Princeton’s status as a general-law city means our council’s hands are tied to following state law. It’s fair, therefore, to ask: Would you rather have those rules set by those who live here among us or by those who live in faraway corners of our far-flung state?

State law does require something quite useful as we ponder this upcoming election: It requires the city to send copies of the draft charter to every registered voter in the city. It’ll come in the mail and I encourage all Princeton voters to look it over … with care and discernment.

Our city continues to grow in large leaps and bounds. Our elected City Council needs the power to set its own rules. I hope we have the wisdom to grant our fellow Princeton residents that authority.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national security

It wasn’t a ‘raid’

One man’s “raid” is another man’s “search,” which of course depends on which side of the great divide you stand.

As I listen to the commentary after the FBI search of Donald Trump’s South Florida digs earlier this week, I am left to presume that the right-wing media have bought wholly and fully into The Donald’s description of the event as a “raid.”

It was nothing of the sort.

The Justice Department sought a search warrant from a federal judge. DOJ officials cited “probable cause” to believe a crime might have been committed. The judge agreed. The FBI entered the glitzy palace … in the presence of one of Trump’s legal advisers.

They left Mar-a-Lago with about a dozen boxes of documents.

It wasn’t a “raid.” Trump’s home was not “under siege,” as the former POTUS said initially. It was all done legally in accordance with federal law and, oh yeah, the U.S. Constitution.

Therefore, I will not refer to the event as a “raid.”

I now will wait — along with the rest of the nation — to learn what the FBI found. That ol’ trick knee of mine tells me they recovered even more evidence that is going to put Donald John Trump into more trouble.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Trump had nuclear secrets? Wow!

Am I hearing this correctly, that some of the documents seized by the FBI in its search of Donald Trump’s Florida digs contained nuclear secrets?

Did the ex-president take this information out of the White House and store them in boxes in the basement of his estate? Were they U.S. nuclear secrets or information about other nuclear powers? Or both?

What in the name of national security would a former president do with this information?

I cannot even begin to wrap my noodle around this bit of news reported today by the Washington Post.

Attorney General Merrick Garland today acknowledged that he gave permission for the FBI to enter Trump’s home. He has also acknowledged that he intends to release the details of the search warrant by the end of the week.

Oh, brother. We all had better hold on with both hands while this matter plays out. This is going to get real ugly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience