media news

Time of My Life, Part 54: Technology advances

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My 8-year-old granddaughter might not know what to call this device. You know what it is. I surely do.

I started work at my first full-time reporting job in Oregon City, Ore., in the spring of 1977. Our suburban afternoon daily newspaper still operated with these gadgets.

Indeed, my favorite moment of a day publishing our newspaper occurred around noon when every one of our staff of six reporters was pounding away on their manual typewriters. I was named editor of that little — and now defunct — newspaper a couple of years after arriving there. I used to stand aside while watching the staff work feverishly to get the copy turned in on time.

We finally advanced to desk top devices that allowed us to type our copy onto floppy disks. The newsroom got significantly quieter at deadline time.

I moved in 1984 to a much larger newspaper in Beaumont, Texas, which had a significantly more advanced computer system. I stayed there nearly 11 years while the newspaper improved its publishing system along the way.

In 1995, I gravitated to my final stop in daily print journalism, moving to Amarillo, Texas, which had a publishing system named after the corporate owners: the Morris Publishing System. It was crappy. Morris Communications ditched that system to something much more workable.

My daily print career ended in the summer of 2012.

This is my way of chronicling all the changes I endured during nearly four decades in journalism. Typewriters to floppy disks to main frame computers to PCs. Now they’re taking pictures with smart phones in the field; they’re using Twitter, Instagram and assorted other media platforms to transmit the news.

It makes my head spin. Then again, my head spun plenty of times as I made my way through a craft I loved pursuing.

Today, I feel a bit like a dinosaur. I just don’t want to become extinct.

local news

Masks still ‘required’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Toby the Puppy and I went for a stroll through the neighborhood this weekend and ventured onto the parking lot of the elementary school just down the street from our house.

We walked next to the front door of the school, where I noticed something interesting and worth sharing.

This blog post isn’t about Toby the Puppy, who continues to amaze us every single day. It is about the sign I read on the front door of Dorothy Lowe Elementary School.

It said that “masks are required” for anyone entering the school.

How … about … that? Texas Gov. Greg Abbott removed the mask mandate he had ordered as the COVID pandemic began raging a year ago. However, the Texas Education Agency has given school districts the option of relaxing the rules or keeping them in force. Princeton Independent School District has opted so far for the latter.

Keep the masks on. Continue to practice social distancing.

There are reports of cities, counties and states across the nation experiencing spikes in COVID infections as they relax the rules. I am unaware of it occurring in North Texas.

I am still concerned that Abbott’s decision was premature. The virus ain’t dead yet. We’re getting inoculated by the millions daily in the United States. I am hopeful we’ll get to that “herd immunity” stage as soon as we get near fully vaccinated status. We aren’t there yet.

Therefore, I am heartened to know that our local school district continues to keep the mask mandate in effect for our schools.

Toby and I finished our walk and I felt better after reading the sign on the front door of the school.

Joe Biden

Run, Joe, run … already?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s re-election campaign — if it happens — has become a talking point among the political class.

A reporter asked Biden at his press conference the other day whether he plans to seek a second term — and whether he expects to run against Donald Trump in 2024.

Sheesh, man! Joe Biden is 78 years old. He is the oldest man ever elected to the presidency. He said in response to the reporter’s question that he believes strongly in “fate,” which I think might be his way of acknowledging his own mortality. I do not wish that for the president, but, well … you know it might go.

Biden’s plan for reelection freezes Democratic field | TheHill

The chatter now involves what a Biden re-election bid does to the Democratic and Republican primary fields.

Let’s see. Donald Trump announced on his first day in office he would seek re-election. Democrats poured onto the primary field in massive numbers; the total hit, what, 22 before they started dropping out. The Hill newspaper thinks a Biden re-election effort could stifle the GOP primary field in 2024, unless the Biden presidency craters between now and then.

I am not going to spend a lot of time wondering or worrying about President Biden’s political future. The political present — a pandemic, immigration, climate change, voting rights — is enough of a challenge for any president.

International news, national news

What constitutes immigration reform?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Some of you, like me who are interested in these things, might be inclined to wonder: What does comprehensive immigration reform look like?

I pose the question in the wake of that visit to the Texas border with Mexico from Republican members of Congress who have decided that the crisis on the border is all President Biden’s fault. They have sniped and snorted over the influx of immigrants fleeing oppression, crime, heartache in Latin America. They are searching for happiness and a new life in the Land of Opportunity and Freedom.

A letter writer to the Dallas Morning News asked of Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, two of the border visitors, whether they were going to stop yapping about Biden’s policies and start offering some comprehensive immigration reform ideas of their own.

What constitutes such reform?

I’ll take a brief stab at it.

  • We ought to establish policies that give a “pathway to citizenship” for those undocumented immigrants who are here already and who have been exposed as front-line workers to the COVID virus. U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif. — the son of immigrants — estimates there are about 5 million out of 11 million undocumented immigrants who fit that description. That’s one idea.
  • Another would be to make the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals a law. Codified it and allow DACA recipients to avoid deportation if they seek citizenship or legal resident status. These individuals were brought here as children — some of them as infants — by their parents who sneaked into the country illegally. Many of the DACA recipients have pursued fruitful careers as U.S. residents. They have excelled academically. They have paid their taxes. They have worked hard. They have raised families of their own.
  • Still another notion would be to reform the Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy of separating children from their parents, which was a hallmark of the Donald Trump administration. I don’t want to see ICE dismantled. It can perform a valuable service in protecting this country. There is plenty of opportunity to make it a more humanely operated agency.
  • And yes, we need to beef up border security.  We don’t need to erect walls along our border. It is too costly and its effectiveness is questionable. This nation has plenty of technological know-how to find and identify those who cross our border in the dead of night. We already are returning many undocumented immigrants already. I have no problem with that policy.

I know this doesn’t cover the whole gambit of immigration reform. I just want to see our elected representatives start dealing forthrightly with some solutions rather than tossing blame at an administration that has made a more “humane” immigration policy its benchmark.

DC riot, national news

Mulvaney calls it correctly

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald John Trump’s delusion continues even as he tees it up at his posh South Florida resort.

The ex-president told Fox News that the Jan. 6 insurrection from the riotous mob of terrorists posed “zero threat.”

That brought a sharp rebuke from one of Trump’s chief defenders/enablers, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who told CNN that Trump’s remarks are “manifestly false.”

“I was surprised to hear the president say that … Clearly, there were people who were behaving themselves and then there were people who absolutely were not,” Mulvaney told CNN.

Mulvaney calls Trump’s comments on Capitol riot ‘manifestly false’ | TheHill

No. They were not behaving themselves.

And yet Donald Trump continues to lie incessantly.

The riot’s aim was to stop Congress from doing its constitutional duty on Jan. 6, which was to certify the results of the presidential election. It was a violent attempted insurrection. It was an act of sedition. It was profoundly violent and dangerous!

I am no fan of Mick Mulvaney. However, I am glad to hear him speak the truth about the delusion that rumbles around in the head of his former boss.

Joe Biden, national news

Let’s go big, Mr. POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden wants to go big on infrastructure repair, renovation and revitalization.

I’m all in.

This gives me a bit of the willies to say this, given the immense amount of money that Biden wants to spend. I realize our debt is mounting. We’re going to run a huge deficit again this fiscal year; given that I am a deficit hawk, that prospect alone gives me the cold sweats.

Here’s the thing: If any president in the past 50-plus years — probably since President Lyndon Baines Johnson left the White House in 1969 — can shepherd legislation through Congress, it is Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

What might happen? Well, he wants to spend, reportedly, $3 trillion to repair roads, highways, bridges, rail lines, ship channels, airports … all of it. Whereas his predecessor, Donald Trump, talked a good game about infrastructure repair, he was, as NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd noted, more interested in “frittering away his days hitting the links and tweet-trashing Bette Midler.”

Opinion | Joe Biden Should Just Give It a Go – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Trump couldn’t legislate his way out of a wet paper bag. President Biden stepped out of the legislative mold into the executive branch of government in 2009 when he became vice president in the Obama administration. Now he is The Man, the chief exec, head of state, head of government, commander in chief. However, he hasn’t forgotten the legislative skills he learned in 36 years serving in the U.S. Senate.

What else might happen? There will be jobs handed out to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have seen their livelihoods vanish in this COVID era. I cannot, and I damn sure won’t try to, predict that all those jobs will generate enough of a tax boost to reduce the deficit and carve into the debt, but we’ve traipsed down this road before.

In 2009, Barack Obama inherited an economy in collapse. He and Vice President Biden managed to persuade Congress to enact an economic relief package that jump-started the economy. They did so over the objection of damn near every Republican this side of Ronald Reagan’s grave. The package worked. It got the job done. The economy revived. Oh, and the deficit whittled its way down to about two-thirds of what it was when Obama and Biden took office.

Can history repeat itself? Maybe it can. My hunch is that President Biden is willing to go big on infrastructure reform.

Go for it, Mr. President.

local news, political news

Trump is no one’s POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Take a gander at this picture.

I don’t know precisely where it was taken. It showed up on my Facebook news feed with a caption that it implies it’s in Dallas.

Eek!

Then someone else posted a note that said Donald Trump 2024 shirts are on sale somewhere in Amarillo. Now that doesn’t entirely surprise me, given the Texas Panhandle’s extreme right-wing tendencies. President Biden carried Dallas County by a handsome margin in 2020. Donald Trump rolled over Biden in Randall and Potter counties — which Amarillo straddles — also by handsome margins.

But … here’s the deal. Donald Trump lost the election. He would lose again were he to run a second time, in my view. I do not believe he is going to run for president again.

Trump has some legal and financial issues with which to contend. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., and Manhattan, N.Y., are breathing down his neck. He has $400 million in debt that is coming due. It’s possible that he will remain blocked from social media platforms on the basis of the Big Lie he keeps spreading about so-called vote fraud in the 2020 election.

He’s already been revealed as a lying fraud. Just maybe lightning will strike, hell will freeze over and the sun will rise in the west one day, and that the Trumpkin Corps of believers will see that their guy is a first-class phony.

local news

Sign says it all

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If only I had been able to snap a picture of what I am about to discuss.

We were driving the other day toward Frisco and exited the Sam Rayburn Tollway to enter the North Dallas Tollway. We drove a few miles and exited that North Dallas thoroughfare. That’s when my wife spotted a sign that read:

Keep moving, we’ll bill you.

That brings me to the point of this brief ditty, which is a comment on the brilliance of the North Texas Tollway Authority.

There once was a time when I detested toll roads. Why? Because so many of them had pay booths that required you to fumble around for the correct amount of money to throw into some machine.

Those days are gone. The NTTA sells stickers you attach to your windshield. When you use the tollway, it snaps a picture of your vehicle and your sticker. Then it deducts the toll you pay from an account you have set up.

Easy, man.

This kind of ease has converted this anti-toll road fanatic into someone who endorses them wholeheartedly.

national news

Sen. Romney earns salute

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Someone with whom I am casually acquainted over social media objected this weekend to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum granting its annual Profile in Courage award to Sen. Mitt Romney.

Romney, a Utah Republican got the award for voting in early 2020 to convict Donald J. Trump of abuse of power during Trump’s first impeachment trial in the Senate. I applaud the honor that Romney will receive later this year.

This acquaintance disagrees. He wrote: This is just plain sad. No doubt the foundation decided this was a worthy act as a way to encourage those of faint heart and limp spine to stand up to political bullies. But really, what did Romney risk? There’s not much evidence that he might lose his seat over it, but even if he did, he’s still a very wealthy man near the end of his career. The fact that so many of his colleagues lacked the willingness to do the obvious for the good of the nation they swore to defend doesn’t make Romney’s vote particularly courageous. It makes the others abject cowards.

I responded with this: I will disagree. Romney’s vote has exposed him to ridicule and shaming from many within the GOP. I agree that they aren’t “legitimate” Rs who stand on policy or principle, but rather are beholden to the carnival barker who sold ’em the snake oil. I applaud the JFK Library for recognizing the courage Romney exhibited by being the first senator to vote to convict a president of his own party. Yep … well earned.

I just felt the need to share this with you here.

Sen. Romney will receive the award this summer. I believe JFK would be proud.

national news

Not an ‘insurrection?’ Are they serious?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Terrible Ten members of the U.S. House of Representatives have shamed the Capitol Police Department officers who were injured in a desperate attempt to protect them from insurrectionists on Jan. 6.

Yep, their refusal to support honoring the police officers who fought off the mob still stick in my craw. Congress eventually voted to award them the Congressional Gold Medal over the objections of the 10 nut jobs who just didn’t like the word “insurrectionists” inserted into the resolution honoring the officers.

Oh, let’s not forget that one of the Capitol cops who fought the rioting terrorists died in the melee.

What in the name of democracy do you call a mob that stormed the Capitol Building, beat officers to a pulp with flag poles carrying Donald Trump banners and Old Glory? What do you call those who shouted “Hang Mike Pence!” while they stormed the halls looking for the vice president of the United States? What in the name of decency do you call those who defecated on the floor of our democratic institutions while seeking to do physical harm to Speaker Nancy Pelosi?

That isn’t an insurrection? They sought to stop the counting of Electoral College votes that certified the election of Joe Biden as president and Kamala Harris as vice president.

By any definition I can conjure up, that is an insurrection.

Every single House member and senator who seeks to call it something else should be removed from office. They have disgraced the very government they took an oath to protect and defend.

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