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Awaiting this inaugural

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Every so often I state my love of pageantry.

Readers of this blog know, how I love parades, patriotic music, pomp and circumstance, the sight of all those Old Glories flying in the breeze.

We’re going to get a lot of such pageantry on Jan. 20. That’s when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take office as president and vice president of the United States of America.

This upcoming inaugural is going to be different than practically all that have preceded it. There won’t be as much pomp and circumstance as before. The coronavirus pandemic is going to limit crowd size and the scope of the celebration.

That won’t matter to me.

What does matter is that President Biden and Vice President Harris take their oaths and get down immediately to the task of repairing the damage being inflicted right now, today, in real time by Donald John Trump.

That means when the clock strikes noon EST on the 20th of January, Chief Justice John Roberts is going to extend his hand and say to Joe Biden, “Congratulations, Mr. President.”

I plan to watch every minute of that glorious event. I also plan to have a box of tissue handy. I expect fully to shed a tear of joy as I watch the new president take charge.

I do love the pageantry of it all. This year, the circumstances of Donald Trump’s angry, embittered, unlawful exit only lends to the emotion I am bound to feel as the Seditionist/Liar/Narcissist/Sore Loser in Chief exits the stage.

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Call it ‘horrific’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Horrific.

Simply horrific.

I am utterly astounded beyond belief at what is transpiring inside the White House — my house, your house, our house — as it regards the con man masquerading as president of the United States.

Donald J. Trump has demanded that Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensberger “find” 11,800 votes that would overturn that state’s presidential verdict in November. Georgia sent its electoral votes to President-elect Joe Biden. Trump wants those votes for himself and is asking Georgia’s top election official to break the law.

That all by itself is a violation of the law.

We have a lawless, amoral, narcissistic carnival barker seeking to subvert our democratic process. It might fall into the category of treason, but it looks for all the world like sedition, which is another way of seeking to overthrow government processes.

Donald Trump’s fomenting the latest Big Lie about “widespread voter fraud” is just beyond every pale I can imagine.

However, I am going to offer a glimmer of good news. Trump’s effort to overturn the election will fail. Congress on Wednesday will ratify what the Electoral College has certified, that Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were elected Nov. 3. There will be an inauguration on Jan. 20. President Biden and Vice President Harris will take office on that day.

Donald Trump and VP Mike Pence will be gone.

That clear and unambiguous path out of this sheer madness gives me reason for hope that we will survive this horrific drama.

national news

Will new POTUS rethink whether to prosecute Trump?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Biden is on record saying he has no interest in pursuing federal charges against his immediate predecessor once he leaves office.

Now we hear from the Georgia secretary of state declaring that Donald Trump might have violated federal law by pressuring him to find 11,000 votes to flip so that Trump could put Georgia in the “win” column from the 2020 election.

I believe they call it election tampering, yes?

Secretary of state Ben Raffensperger — a Republican — doesn’t say he wants Trump to be prosecuted, but that he well might face scrutiny from the Justice Department.

The recording of the phone call aired over the weekend suggests Trump was intent on strong-arming Georgia to flip the outcome. Federal statute specifically prohibits such chicanery. No one is above the law, correct? That means the POTUS can be prosecuted if he violates the law.

The phone call is about as “perfect” as the call Trump made to the Ukraine president to solicit dirt on Joe Biden.

Yep, the lame-duck president of the United States is out of control and out of his mind.

I now am wondering if the new president should be rethinking the notion of forgoing a federal probe into this latest criminal act by the current president.

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Ex-speaker blasts colleagues … who don’t hear him

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan is angry with his former Republican congressional colleagues.

Ryan believes they have embarked on an “un-American,” and “anti-conservative” strategy while seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Of course he is correct. One big problem exists, however. They don’t give crap what the former speaker thinks of their shenanigans.

According to Business Insider: “All our basic rights and freedoms flow from a fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law,” Ryan, who represented Wisconsin in the House from 1999 until 2019, said in a statement. “This principle is not only fundamentally American but a central tenet of conservatism. Under our system, voters determine the president, and this self-governance cannot sustain itself if the whims of Congress replace the will of the people. I urge members to consider the precedent that it would set.”

Do you think any of the nimrods who are seeking to challenge President-elect Biden’s victory when Congress meets this week to certify the Electoral College tally from the election will heed these words?

Nope. They are hellbent on shaming the nation.

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Trump: Most dangerous POTUS in history

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The New York Times has published a story that begins with this paragraph:

President Trump demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election, and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense,” during an hourlong telephone conversation with him on Saturday, according to audio excerpts from the conversation.

Trump Pressured Georgia Official to ‘Find’ Enough Votes to Overturn Election (msn.com)

Now, let’s ponder the consequence of that news article brings to us.

To me it tells of a president seeking to coerce a state election official to change the outcome of an election and to threaten him if he doesn’t do what the president is demanding.

Have you ever heard of such a travesty? Can anyone recall any president in any era of any political party doing the kind of thing that Donald Trump has done in the wake of an election he lost … by a lot?

What we have on our hands — for the next 16 days — is a president who is out of control. He’s also out of his mind.

Every move he makes to overturn an election, to subvert democracy, to violate the very oath he took to defend the Constitution and abide by the law only ratifies what many millions of us have known since before the guy became president.

It is that he presents a dire danger to the very nation that elected him as its president.

We have corrected that grievous error and I am awaiting the moment when Joseph Biden takes the oath and rescues this country from the madman he will succeed.

national news

‘Compartmentalize,’ Mr. POTUS-elect

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Part of President Clinton’s success in the White House involved his ability to “compartmentalize” his relationships with political foes, including the politicians who sought his removal from office via impeachment after he messed around with a White House intern.

Clinton was able to set whatever personal animus he had for those individuals and work constructively with them to, oh, balance the federal budget and keep the economy steaming merrily along.

President Biden might encounter a similar challenge when he takes office in 16 days. At this moment, 11 Republican senators and 140 House members want to challenge his duly constituted election as president of the United States. They are dancing to the tune being called by the Seditionist in Chief, Donald Trump, who continues to rouse the rabbles by insisting there was voter fraud … where there wasn’t. Not even a little bit!

I am appalled to say that the Senate GOP ringleader appears to be the Cruz Missile, Texas’s junior senator Ted Cruz, who has managed to make me detest him more now than when he first entered the Senate.

Joe Biden has built a lengthy list of professional relationships with members of Congress on both sides of the great divide. He served for 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president. The man knows the players, he knows what makes ’em tick, can find their hot buttons without even trying.

He also will have to deal forthrightly with their insurgency, with the aim of subverting a legal, free and fair election. They want an “audit” of the results in several states before certifying the Electoral College vote this week. They won’t get the audit, but those 151 members of Congress will be on the record insisting on getting it.

How will the new president work with them? He must be able to compartmentalize those relationships the way President Clinton was able to do during his two successful terms in office.

If he can do that and give Americans the kind of leadership and governance that’s been missing for the past four years, President Biden will be able to craft a highly successful tenure in the nation’s highest office.

Here is hoping for President Biden’s success right out of the chute.

national news

‘Lock him up’!

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Is it a crime for a public official to encourage another public official to break the law?

I kinda think it is.

What do you suppose Donald Trump was doing in that hour-long phone conversation with the Georgia secretary of state, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes cast for Trump so that he could reverse the outcome in Georgia of the 2020 presidential election?

From my vantage point, Donald Trump was berating the secretary of state into breaking the law.

This is further proof — as if anyone needed it — of Donald Trump’s supreme unfitness for the job he is going to surrender in just 17 days to President-elect Joe Biden.

Lock him up! Seriously!

Lock him up!

local news

Men and Women of the Year? Of course!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One of the stark truths of this blog is that it hasn’t offered much praise for a newspaper where I worked for nearly 18 years. I have watched it decline to a level I no longer recognize.

Then the Amarillo Globe-News did something the other day that I find truly inspiring. Instead of singling out a Man and Woman of the Year for 2020, it chose its Men and Women of the Year: the frontline medical staffs in the Texas Panhandle who have risked their lives saving others’ lives in the wake of the killer pandemic.

A no-brainer, you say? Eh, one could make that argument. Except that not all publications that bestow these honors have followed that lead.

The Globe-News solicits nominations from the public. It would gather its management team at the end of a calendar year to deliberate over who should get the honor. The newspaper would dispatch a reporter to interview the subject and those close to him and her, concocting some pretext for the interview. Then the paper would publish its Man and Woman of the Year on Jan. 1. The paper has honored its Man of the Year since 1950; its Woman of the Year since 1974.

It’s still doing so, but with a dramatically different setup than I remember. Whatever the case, the choice this year was at one time an easy call and an inspired one.

Perhaps every community in America should honor their first responders, their medical staffs, their emergency services personnel in such a manner.

The Panhandle has been staggered by the toll brought by the virus. Its acute-care hospitals have been stretched to the limit. Its nursing homes and assisted living centers have been ravaged. They all are staffed by dedicated men and women who have become in many cases “surrogate loved ones” to patients who have struggled with the COVID-19 virus. They have held the hands of patients, told them of their love for them … and then watched many of them die.

It has been heartbreaking beyond measure.

Yes, they deserve to be honored for their hard work and their selflessness. As the newspaper stated in its New Year’s Day editorial: We also know this year, that while there were others nominated for this distinction, we found none more deserving. After all, a year like no other should yield honorees like no other.

Well … done.

national news

Simply beyond belief

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A friend of mine calls them members of the “Sedition Caucus” of the Republican Party.

Indeed, the 11 GOP senators and 140 House of Representatives members have collaborated to form what has to be the among the most dangerous political cabals in American history.

They want to challenge the results of this past year’s election that chose Joe Biden to be president of the United States. They contend, without a shred of evidence, that the result is tainted by voter fraud in key states that Biden won over Donald J. Trump. They want to launch an emergency 10-day “audit” of the results in several states to determine whether their claims of fraud can hold up.

Spoiler alert: They won’t!

To make matters even worse — if that is even possible — they have persuaded Vice President Mike Pence to join them. Pence is slated to preside next Wednesday over a joint congressional session to ratify the results of the Electoral College vote putting Biden into the presidency on Jan. 20.

Pence Backs Republican Lawmakers’ Plan To Object To Electoral College Results | 88.9 KETR

What the hell is going on here?

There was no fraud. There was no corruption. Americans cast their votes. They were counted. Biden got 81.3 million of them; Trump collected 74.2 million. The Electoral College ended up with Biden winning 306-232. The election was conducted under strict scrutiny by state and local officials adhering to all the protocols necessary to prevent hanky-panky at the polls.

Courts have ruled against all the challenges of the result. The former U.S. attorney general, William Barr, has determined there was no fraud. 

Now these kooks who serve in Congress want to conduct an audit? They are challenging the result of a duly constituted election? They want to sow even more division, suspicion and doubt into this democratic process? With the blessing of the current (for now) president of the United States?

Outrageous!

legal news, local news

Is there a trial in my future?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A longtime dream of mine took a baby step toward coming true today when I fetched the mail from the mailbox.

It contained a jury summons from the Collin County Courthouse.

The dream involves serving on a trial jury. I long have wanted to perform that particular act of citizenship.

I came of age in my native Oregon. I never got a summons, not from Multnomah County or from Clackamas County, where we lived until we moved to Texas in 1984.

I would get a summons from Jefferson County on occasion, but then would be dismissed. We moved eventually to Randall County in the Texas Panhandle in 1995, where I would occasionally receive a jury summons. One time — just once! — I had to report for duty, where I joined other potential jurors waiting to be selected. Then out came District Judge David Gleason to tell us that our services wouldn’t be needed. Every other summons I got from Randall County would result in my being informed that everyone had settled so I didn’t have to report.

We have migrated to Princeton, in Collin County. The summons arrived today. To be honest, this summons doesn’t tell me if I might be called to serve on a district court jury, a court at law jury or a justice of the peace court jury. Does that mean my chances of being called might pan out? I hope it does.

I know you might think I am a bit loony in the noggin, but I want to serve on a jury. I am aware of those who seek exemptions, citing their work or their age or their physical infirmity. The only thing I can claim is my age, given that I am well north of 65 years of age now. I am not going to evade jury duty.

I know the pay ain’t great. It used to be $6 daily. They’ve kicked it up a bit. That doesn’t matter to me in the least.

Don’t mistake me as some sort of do-gooder, although I have been distressed to read over the years about Texas courts struggling to find eligible residents willing to serve on juries. I have long been curious about how jurors interact with each other and with officers of the court.

I hope I get the chance to find out.

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