national news

Service arrives without warning

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SANTA CRUZ, Calif — Now, that’s what I call serious public service … so here comes the explanation.

My wife and I were motoring away from an RV park on the Santa Cruz harbor. We took a couple of turns and headed north on Californian Highway 1; then we turned onto California 17, a stretch of highway between Santa Cruz and Los Gatos that makes the locals grind their teeth … or so I have been told over the years.

Suddenly, we decided we needed to pull over and take care of an issue regarding our travel trailer. We found a wide spot on the shoulder of the highway, pulled over, turned on our emergency flashers. My wife jumped out to tend to the business that needed tending.

While we were stopped, a California Highway Patrol officer pulled in behind us. No lights were flashing. No outward display that he was on an emergency call. He just sat there.

My bride finished her work. She came back to the truck. I turned the emergency flashing lights off and headed onto the northbound highway.

Then I noticed the CHP officer patrol cruiser already in traffic, running interference for us. He flashed his headlights to let me know it was safe to merge into traffic,

Is this a big deal? No, it isn’t. However, it speaks to the kind of public service many of us often take for granted. Rogue police officers get plenty of criticism for when they mess up; too often their misbehavior results in tragedy.

It occurred to me that perhaps this officer noticed we were from out of state and wanted to demonstrate some extra hospitality to visitors — even if they come from Texas.

Those who perform routine and random acts of kindness, such as what the CHP officer showed my wife and me do not get any kind of recognition.

That is why I want to take particular note of what we experienced on a California highway.

To that officer, whoever you are … thank you.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, International news, national news

Presidents cannot control global oil prices

Presidents of the United States inherit an office with enormous power … of that everyone agrees.

However, there are limits to that power. Such as the price of oil and other energy-producing resources. The price of gasoline and other motor vehicles have skyrocketed — again! — in recent weeks. Does the president have as much control over that as critics suggest? No! He damn sure doesn’t.

Yet the current president, Joe Biden, is paying the price politically for a trend over which he has little control. OPEC nations decided all by themselves to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day. Someone has to remind me how the president of the United States can control OPEC’s policymakers.

Joe Biden’s foes are trying make hay out of decisions that are made far from the White House. They are pounding him. I just want the world to know how this blogger feels about the pummeling that Biden is getting. He doesn’t deserve it.

Having stated that here, I am acutely aware it won’t stop the non-stop — and unfair — criticism he is getting.

It’s part of the political game Joe Biden entered all those decades ago.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Don’t turn back on Ukraine

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Memo to Kevin McCarthy: If Republicans take control of Congress after the midterm election, y’all will trifle with trouble if you resist delivering as much aid as possible to Ukraine, which is fighting — successfully — for its independence against Russian aggressors.

The U.S. House GOP leader has said Congress might keep the checkbook open as the war progresses. My own view is that McCarthy is sending a chilling message to Ukrainians and is giving a bit  of comfort to Russian thug Vladimir Putin as he continues to prosecute his immoral and illegal war against Ukraine.

It seems plausible, in a bizarre way, for the Republican congressional leader t threaten to pull back on aid to Ukraine. The GOP’s titular leader, Donald Trump, has been cold-stone silent on the Russian invasion, seeming to imply an endorsement of the action that Putin took against a sovereign nation.

Is this the kind of congressional leadership this country needs in this time of dire peril? I think not!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, Donald Trump, national news

Prepare for the Big Stall

Donald J. Trump has been summoned to testify before the House select 1/6 committee, but none of us should hold our breath waiting for the ex-POTUS to actually testify … under oath.

The former president who insists he did nothing wrong, that he didn’t incite the assault on the Capitol on 1/6 is going to act like someone who is as guilty as hell. He will stall, delay, obstruct and otherwise do all he can do to stall his testimony.

And all of it will produce a ton of evidence that Trump is as guilty as the dickens.

The former Imbecile in Chief is seeking to prevent his testimony.

Now, I have to wonder: Why would an innocent man want to prevent testifying before a duly constituted congressional committee? You and I know the answer to that. It’s because he can’t tell the truth if his life depended on it and, therefore, the truth is going to convict him.

This individual should prepare for being served with an indictment.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP leader: Coward!

I now am able to identify the poster boy for political cowardice, which I feel compelled to mention here given that my bride and I have visited his home state.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy needs to stand up, take a bow and yell from the highest roof he can find that “My name is Kevin and I am a coward.”

McCarthy serves as House of Representatives Republican leader. He wants to become the next speaker of the House, presuming that the GOP wins a majority of House seat after the midterm election.

McCarthy once chastised Donald J. Trump for refusing to act during the 1/6 insurrection. He made speeches on the House floor that condemned Trump’s inaction, his refusal to stop the assault on our democratic process.

Then the damnedest thing happen. Trump left office after the insurrection, holed up at his glitzy house in Florida and then McCarthy went there to have his picture made with the idiot he condemned after the insurrection. They stood there mugging for cameras. They shook hands and McCarthy acted for all the world like someone who didn’t say what he said on 1/6.

When the time came to impeach Trump a second time for inciting the assault on our government, McCarthy voted “no.” In the year and some months since that fateful impeachment, McCarthy has remained silent while evidence has piled up about Trump’s involvement in inciting the attack; he hasn’t condemned Trump for seeking to end the threat against Vice President Mike Pence’s life.

Where does that leave the House Republican caucus? It leaves them with deciding whether to anoint a coward as the speaker of the House … if that comes to pass.

McCarthy’s cowardice simply is an amazing spectacle to behold.

Johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, national news, political news

Borders aren’t ‘open’!

I want to dispel another bit of demagoguery that is beginning to dominate the 2022 midterm election season. It deals with our borders, north and south.

Now I shall declare that the southern border isn’t an “open border,” which is what Republican candidates for state and national office keep insisting.

Normally I might chuckle at some of the rhetoric coming from Texas GOP candidates. They keep attaching their Democratic opponents’ name to President Biden, suggesting that Biden and all other Democrats favor “open borders.”

This makes me want to pull my hair out … which is saying something, because I don’t have quite as much hair on my noggin as I used to have.

The demagogues, of course, refer to our southern border, which is where so many of these migrants are approaching. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently declared his department would send those from Venezuela back to their country if they seek to enter it without proper documentation. Is that the policy of an open-border-loving administration?

Hah! Hardly.

Yet the GOP continues harping on that falsehood. To suggest a politician favors “open borders” implies someone who wants to turn a blind eye to criminals who might be among the migrants seeking entry into the Land of Opportunity.

Well, demagoguery manages to score political points. It does nothing else if it doesn’t include policy proposals. I hear damn little in the way of policy discussion from the GOP demagogues.

I agree with those who contend that the Biden administration needs to treat the southern border problem as the “crisis” that many of us contend it is. However, I will not accept the notion that U.S. immigration policy has turned our borders into a thousand-mile-long sieve.

We continue to round up illegal migrants every day. Thus, the borders aren’t open.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news

Gasoline sticker shock!

LUDLOW, Calif. — My nose nearly started bleeding when I saw the price of gasoline I was about to pump into my Ford Ranger truck.

It stood at $7.49 per gallon. And that was for the cheapest octane level of go-juice!

If you know where Ludlow is, you’ll understand that it sits in the middle of nowhere, man along Interstate 40 not too far from the California-Arizona border. The owners of the two gasoline service stations at this intersection apparently are free to charge whatever the dickens they want.

I didn’t like having to pay that much for the gas, which is the same stuff I purchase at home in Princeton, Texas — only for a whole lot less.

I refuse to get into the why and how come gas prices are so great in some parts of the country. Seven bucks-plus for gasoline is obscene.

My sticker shock has abated. It is replaced with sincere sympathy for those who live in an area where they have to shell out so much dough for a commodity that should cost a fraction of they’re paying.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, military news

Ukrainians expose Russian myth

Many of us outsiders never really saw this coming, that the Ukrainian armed forces would expose Russia’s once-vaunted military machine to be a third-rate fighting force.

It has occurred.

Now, to be sure, I did once assert as war loomed more likely between Ukraine and Russia that the Ukrainians weren’t “defenseless.” The now-sovereign nation once was part of the Soviet Union and, thus, benefited somewhat from its exposure to the Red Army’s legendary battlefield prowess.

The USSR is gone. What is left is a country, the Russian Federation, that comprises roughly half of its former population. It does maintain a significant nuclear force.

What we’re seeing played out on the field of battle in Ukraine is a case of a nation fighting desperately — and effectively — to preserve its independence while its opponent is suffering from a lack of morale, incompetent battlefield leadership and a national leader who has become a pariah among world leaders because he launched an illegal and immoral war.

What’s more, the Russians have committed war crimes with their indiscriminate attacks on women, children and other “soft targets.”

I don’t expect Russia to surrender to Ukraine. I am now beginning to believe the reports that Russian goon Vladimir Putin might be exploring a possible face-saving way to end this conflict.

Do I believe he will use tactical nukes on Ukraine? No. He knows the consequences would be catastrophic. Indeed, President Biden has dropped broad hints that the allied response to any such act of madness could produce even more economic pain on the Russians than they ever imagined.

The course of this war has simply blown my mind. It has produced at least a glimmer of hope that battlefield incompetence will succumb to a nation’s will to survive.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Election deniers pose grave danger

I am trying like the dickens — with everything I can muster up — to be optimistic about the midterm election.

Except that those damn public opinion polls are showing an alarming — and frightening! — trend out there. It is that the election deniers, the MAGA Republicans, the Trump cult followers are faring shockingly well among voters prior to the balloting.

I am thinking about the race for Arizona governor, where MAGA fruitcake Kari Lake holds a slim lead over Democrat Katie Hobbs.

Hobbs is the secretary of state. Lake has vowed to “overturn” the results of the 2020 presidential election and work to return Donald Trump to the presidency he lost during that election. President Biden won Arizona by roughly 11,000 votes. The MAGA goons brought in those phony election analysts to perform a “forensic audit” of the 2020 balloting and, guess what … they found that Biden actually won the election.

That ain’t good enough for Kari Lake and other MAGA goons who support.

She’s not the only one. We have that MAGA moron in Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriani, pledging the same thing if he beats Josh Shapiro to be that state’s governor.

I cannot help but believe that if the MAGA wing of the Republican Party carries the day in these key elections that this country is in a serious world of hurt.

And what in the world is all this going to deliver for the 2024 election and the result it produces? If the election deniers hold public office, they promise to finish what the 1/6 insurrection effort sought to do after the 2020 election: overturn the result.

Are we really and truly prepared to walk down that path?

Man, if we are, then we are in much worse trouble than any of us ever imagined.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

She paid, but denies anything wrong … huh?

GRANTS, N.M. –– This story got past me until this recently when my wife and I ventured through New Mexico en route to points west.

It involves New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who according to reports I read followed the Donald J. Trump playbook of paying an accuser a lot of money while denying the accusation leveled against her.

Grisham, a Democrat, forked over 150 grand to a former campaign staffer who said she grabbed by his crotch — in front of a lot of people. He complained, threatened legal action and then got paid the money to keep quiet.

Except that Lujan and her allies deny the event took place.

All of this makes me scratch my noggin and ask: If it didn’t happen, then why pay the dough?

Remind you of anything? How about the $130,000 that Trump paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels who said the two of them took a one-night tumble right after the birth of Trump’s fifth child from his third wife.

Trump denies to this day it happened … but he forked over the cash because he wanted Daniels to be quiet about the non-encounter.

Weird, man.

Gov. Grisham’s denial now sounds just as phony.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience