DC riot

Liz Cheney is so correct

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Hell clearly has entered the deep freeze.

How do I know that? Because I happen to agree with U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who I once considered to be one of the GOP’s premier fire-breathers.

No longer do I hold that view.

Rep. Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump over his inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. Now she says that anyone in Congress who had a hand in voting to overturn the 2020 presidential election should be disqualified from running for president in 2024.

That means you, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Cheney ventured to a GOP retreat in Florida. As CNN reported: “I think we have a huge number of interesting candidates, but I think that we’re going to be in a good position to be able to take the White House,” she told the New York Post. “I do think that some of our candidates who led the charge, particularly the senators who led the unconstitutional charge, not to certify the election, you know, in my view, that’s disqualifying.”

You see why I agree with her? She makes sense. Cheney is a rock-ribbed, true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool Republican. She also understands the Constitution and values greatly the oath she took to protect and defend it. Unlike the nimrods in the House and Senate who voted to object to the results of a free and fair election that elected Joe Biden as president of the United States.

Liz Cheney thinks January 6 should be ‘disqualifying’ for some GOPers (msn.com)

I intend to stand with the likes of Liz Cheney any day over the machinations and lies being pitched by those who support the one-time Liar in Chief.

medical news

COVID: still worrisome

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s latest amendment to the COVID mandates he has sought has produced a cause for worry.

Biden now echoes a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation that says it’s OK to go without masks when we’re outdoors. The CDC also cautions against mingling with large crowds of people.

The worry? It comes because I fear too many of us will ignore the caveat laid out there by CDC and the president.

Biden and his medical team are trumpeting the vaccines — all three of them — that are being injected into human bodies. About 30 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose. West Virginia is now offering cold cash money to residents who are resisting the inoculation. I get that we are turning the proverbial corner against the killer pandemic.

Dang it, though! We need to continue to exercise what’s been called “an abundance of caution.”

My wife and I are fully vaccinated. So are our son and daughter-in-law. Their two older sons are as well. Our granddaughter is not yet … but she’s a young’n. We feel comfortable going without masks when we’re in their presence, as we do with our older son who lives elsewhere but who is about to receive his second vaccine.

I just don’t want there to be some mad rush toward “normal living” by those who have grown tired of the masks, of the social distancing, of the incessant hand-washing.

We all can see that so-called light at the end of it all, but we still have some distance to go.

local news

Oh, this blog gives me fits

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

No matter how many times I tell myself how much I love my new role as a full-time blogger, I cannot get past some of the headaches associated with it.

All of them have one thing in common: technology.

I am a technological novice. I am not at all fluent in the language that Internet experts use when they converse with each other. They speak a jargon that is as self-contained as the language that doctors, lawyers and even journalists use when they speak to each other.

So, when technology throws me a curve ball, I am left to (a) my own devices or (b) call on one of my sons who happens to be quite fluent in the language known to those with more than a modicum of knowledge about this stuff.

Hell, I don’t even know a modicum of it.

I have been enduring some technical issues with this blog. I have had to rely on my son to walk me through it. We have had three-way conference calls that include him, me and the domain hosting service for which I pay a handsome annual fee.

I am in the middle of a technical issue right now. We will work our way through it. We’ll slog our way out of the mess.

Will this matter make me less in love with what I do these days? Not on your life. I will persist in seeking answers to these issues. I might even one day become semi-fluent in the language I ought to know when I get one of these geeks on the phone.

I could use some good thoughts and even a prayer or two.

national news

GOP testing POTUS’s patience

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(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Every human being who’s ever lived has limits to his or her patience.

My strong sense is that the today’s Republican Party leadership is testing the wellspring of patience that rests within President Biden.

If only the GOP honchos would wean themselves of the Big Lie being fed to them by Donald J. Trump and his minions about the 2020 election. If only the Republican hierarchy would divest its interest in seeking to overturn a free and fair election. If only they would act as American patriots instead of lunatic wackos.

Trump sits on the sidelines these days. He isn’t silent. He keeps yammering about the phony vote fraud that has prompted the “audit” of Arizona’s election returns. He continues to suggest the election was stolen. He never provides a scintilla of proof for any of the outrageous lies he keeps repeating.

Yet the GOP congressional leadership keeps gobbling it up. It presents itself as being responsible stewards of our federal government. They aren’t. They are responsible only to the former Imbecile in Chief. Damn few of them can say a single critical word about the Big Lie.

Meanwhile, we have a president who wants to enact some big programs. We are fighting a pandemic. We are trying to recover economically from the havoc it has brought. President Biden cannot get the GOP to sign on to what should be a bipartisan effort. Why is that? Because too many of the loyal opposition’s leadership is too wedded to the Big Lie.

The president’s patience surely has its limits.

national news

Politicization: astounding and moronic

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Never did I think back when I was bringing two boys through childhood and into their teen years that we would engage in an astonishing — and frankly moronic — debate over vaccination against an infectious killer.

When our sons required vaccines, they received them. No questions asked. No concerns over the damn politics of the moment.

They were inoculated against polio, smallpox, flu, measles, chicken pox, mumps … you name it.  So was I. So was their mother.

Here we are now. The COVID-19 virus has killed nearly 600,000 Americans and 2 million or so around the world and yet Americans are arguing among themselves over whether to receive one of three certified vaccines that have been deemed overwhelmingly effective against the disease.

And why is that? Why are we debating it? Because some of us still cling to the idiocy that the pandemic isn’t real, that it’s a hoax, that it is the product of some conspiracy cabal intent on doing something, anything to bring mysterious harm to us.

OK, I know … we’ve got that J&J vaccine that’s been reapproved for use after that overblown scare involving six women who contracted serious blood clots after taking that vaccine. Six out of — how many? — 2 million doses. That sent red flags up everywhere.

Meanwhile, President Biden’s medical team is trying to tell us that the vaccines — all of them — are safe for human use.

Most of us are listening. Others are not. There have been arguments at family dinner tables over the vaccines and over whether we should be vaccinated.

It makes me want to pull out my hair!

national news

POTUS to speak to sparse ‘crowd’

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden campaigned for the presidency in the midst of a pandemic, meaning that he avoided staging big campaign rallies.

As president, he is getting set to speak to a joint session of Congress this week. Hmm. Guess what … the House of Representatives chamber will contain a fraction of the number of people who usually listen to these speeches.

The Cabinet won’t be there. Only the Supreme Court chief justice, John Roberts, will be present, with the rest of the court staying away. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley will represent the military brass. Members of the House and Senate will be there. First lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will be in the VIP section, but they will be virtually unaccompanied.

But … the event will show off a bit of history-making. Sitting behind President Biden will be two women: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris.

I understand they’ll be masked up, as will the audience in the chamber.

An earlier blog post wondered how the partisans will react. Will they cheer the president’s arrival? Will they stand and applaud when Speaker Pelosi introduces him?

I am not going to obsess over things we cannot control. I am, however, going to applaud the precautions that the powers that be are taking to avoid creating one of those “super spreader” events.

After all, the pandemic is still raging.

national news

Time and money wasted

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You need to pay careful attention to what I intend to say here, which is that an invaluable amount of time and money is being spent in Arizona to determine whether a free and fair election was conducted, well … freely and fairly.

Spoiler alert: It was conducted fairly and was relatively corruption-free.

That, however, is not dissuading Arizona Republican Party officials from conducting an “audit” of more than 2 million ballots cast in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, which — I hasten to add — voted for Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president in 2020.

Now, to be fair, the Biden margin of victory over Donald J. Trump wasn’t huge. It was only a little more than 45,000 votes out of the total cast in the sprawling county. Will the election audit produce the kind of swing that GOP loons want to occur? Hah! I wouldn’t bet your sturdiest pair of jeans on that happening.

And what do you suppose it would do to the overall Electoral College outcome if by some miracle that hell freezes over and they overturn the election result in Arizona? Not a damn thing. Joe Biden still would be elected president and Donald Trump still would be banished to his posh south Florida resort.

The Arizona Republic reported:

Former President Donald Trump on Friday praised GOP senators in Arizona for their “tireless efforts” to recount millions of Maricopa County ballots, predicting the massive review would produce startling findings.

Despite prior audits — and a host of election lawsuits — failing to turn up evidence of Joe Biden “stealing” the presidency, Trump thanked the lawmakers for “the incredible job they are doing in exposing the large scale voter fraud” in the 2020 election.

Startling findings? Hah! There he goes again, fomenting the Big Lie about phony vote fraud.

Arizona election audit updates: Pause in recount appears off as Democrats won’t post bond (msn.com)

I am going to say this for as long as I can string a cogent thought or two together: There was no rampant vote fraud in the 2020 election.

Think for just a moment about this fact: If you are an election official anywhere in the United States and you know about the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, you are going to work double- and triple-overtime to ensure that the process is squeaky clean.

Does anyone with a half a noodle in their skull believe there was anything approaching the hanky-panky that Trump and his cabal of goons suggest occurred?

Donald Trump talked about the media being the “enemy of the people.” He has it all wrong. The 45th president of the United States is the enemy we all should fear.

Donald Trump

Trump policies? What are they?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Not in a million, a billion, a gazillion years will I ever accept the dubious notion that Donald J. Trump’s followers are enamored of his policies … such as they are.

As a social media acquaintance of mine said this weekend, they were in love with his lies, his hatred of certain ethnic groups, with the manner in which he led them down some garden path.

They are waiting for some signal from their guy, the ex-president, that he’ll be back in the arena. The 2024 presidential election might beckon him.

Wait a second, though. Trump told Fox News that he cannot yet divulge what he intends to do in the future because of “legal issues.” Legal issues? What are they? He said he will decide in due course whether he’ll run for president again.

The legal issues hanging over his noggin likely have to do with the possible criminal indictments that might come from Manhattan (N.Y.) District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., or from Fulton County (Ga.) DA Fani Willis, both of whom are investigating separate but serious criminal complaints leveled against Trump.

As for the Trumpkins awaiting the possible return of their guy, well, they have been snookered into the cult that Trump developed from the moment he declared his 2016 presidential candidacy by declaring that Mexican immigrants were “rapists, murderers and drug dealers” coming to the United States to poison us.

Policies? He cannot speak to any of it.

economic news

POTUS: Someone has to pay for what we need

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s many decades in government taught him a hard lesson, which is that everything the government does comes with a cost.

Taxpayers have to foot the bill.

He pushed a COVID relief package through Congress. He now wants to enact an infrastructure overhaul through the legislative body. Both of them together are projected at around $4 trillion.

Ouch … yes? Yes, but here’s the deal: In order to pay for all this, the president seeks to levy taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Now he is talking about an increase in capital gains taxes.

Donald Trump talked about infrastructure deals, too. Nothing happened. Congress didn’t move anything through. The president never articulated a way to pay for whatever it was he wanted done. He seemed to suggest that the tax cuts he rammed through Congress would jumpstart the economy sufficiently so that any major government project would pay for itself.

It didn’t happen. Then the pandemic brought the economy to its knees.

Trump lost his re-election bid and now a new president is trying to craft a workable plan to pay for a massive effort to rebuild our economy.

The tax plan already pushed out there will not increase taxes to a level prior to the cut enacted during the Trump years. It still gives congressional Republicans fits, so they’ll fit it along with everything else that the Democratic president proposes.

Reasonableness be damned!

national news

POTUS calls it a ‘crisis’

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden calls the immigrant situation on our nation’s southern border a “crisis.”

Which it is. It has been one for several weeks. The Biden administration has been reluctant to call it such.

But … it is a crisis. Too many children have migrated to our border unaccompanied by their parents. They are filling up temporary shelters all along the border.

Look, I am not going to beat the hell out of President Biden because of his prior reluctance to label this matter a “crisis.” He’s done so. That’s good enough for me.

Now he needs to get busy with finding a solution.

If nothing else the president might be able to get his right-wing critics to muzzle their bloviating about it and start offering some suggestions for how to fix the problem.

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