Sanity must prevail … or else

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am a firm believer in judicial sanity, which is to say that sane minds are likely to prevail in the face of insane legal challenges.

Thus, we have a U.S. Supreme Court roster of justices who will get to decide whether a lawsuit brought forward by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has merit and is worth hearing.

Judicial sanity would seem to dictate that this is a slam dunk for the nation’s highest court. It should toss the matter aside. My hope for the sake of judicial sanity prevailing is that it does so with a terse statement that says in effect: Texas has no standing to bring this case to this court.

Paxton, who appears to be a lousy lawyer, wants the SCOTUS to overturn the results of four states that voted Nov. 3 for President-elect Joe Biden. From the get-go my question has been this: How in the name of election meddling can one state purport to intervene in the electoral affairs of another state? 

Therein might lie the case for judicial sanity presenting itself. The high court should tell AG Paxton to mind his own bee’s wax and butt the hell out. He cannot bring a lawsuit against four states that all have certified the results of their presidential balloting results.

I would say that sanity is a sure thing to prevail, except for this: 17 states’ attorneys general have joined Paxton’s clown show and signed on as intervenors in this idiotic lawsuit. All the AGs have swilled the Donald Trump Kool-Aid and are seeking — and this is as rich as it gets — to overturn the legitimate electoral results of a free and fair election.

I believe in the U.S. Constitution. I believe in the power of reason. I continue to believe that judicial sanity is going to have the final say on this profoundly un-American legal challenge.

Baptist preacher a Marxist? Huh?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler is cracking me up … except that I ain’t laughing.

She is running for election to a seat in Georgia against the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who happens to be the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached to his congregation.

Loeffler brands Warnock as a Marxist sympathizer.

Hold on! Marxism is a philosophy that espouses the notion that God does not exist. Thus, it seems more than a bit of a stretch to suggest that an ordained Baptist preacher — a fellow who speaks to his flock about the love of Jesus Christ — could also sympathize with a God-less society endorsed by Karl Marx.

How does that work. Sen. Loeffler?

Trump testing faith in strength of U.S. Constitution

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump is testing my resolve, my belief in the strength of the U.S. Constitution.

I don’t expect that faith to collapse. I do not expect the defeated president to prevail in his effort to undermine, subvert and destroy our democratic form of government.

I say all that, though, while expressing concern about the course this post-election fire fight is going. It’s making me nervous.

Seventeen states joined the moronic Texas lawsuit that seeks to overturn the election results of four states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden. They’re all states that voted for Trump. They all are governed by those with the same imbecilic view that the election was stolen from Trump by “widespread vote fraud.”

Dammit to hell! There was no such thing! Joe Biden won a free, fair and honest election. Fair and square! If the U.S. attorney general, William Barr — who’s served as Trump’s water carrier — says so, then it must be true. Isn’t that right?

Donald Trump is making a shambles of this transition, which historically has been done without malice, with no outward anger. Not this time. Trump is clinging desperately to an illusion and he’s making a mockery of our sacred political institutions.

Moreover, he is embarrassing the nation he was elected in 2016 to govern. Our allies are laughing at us; our foes are relishing the confusion and discord he is sowing.

This likely will end OK. Joe Biden will take the presidential oath on Jan. 20. He will get to work. I am less confident today than I was a few days or weeks ago about the outcome of this protracted battle. I retain my faith in the U.S. Constitution and the sturdiness of the framework that our founders built.

But … dang! Donald Trump is making it harder to maintain my eternal optimism.

Close … but no cigar!

By JOHN  KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have had a pretty good run over the past week or so.

By that I mean this blog I have been writing full time since the summer of 2012. Here’s what I mean.

I came within a few hundred hits on my blog of setting a single-day record. My traffic was exploding over the course of several days. Then, just as suddenly as it skyrocketed, it settled back down to a more, um, normal pace.

My blog-traffic explosion filled me with some sense of hope that High Plains Blogger had reached a whole new audience out there in cyberworld. I don’t think that’s really the case.

I love writing this blog. It has given me a sense of purpose, although it surely isn’t my sole purpose for awakening each day. It’s just one of them. It allows me to vent. It gives me an avenue to share some thoughts with those who take the time to read them. I encourage folks to share them with their social media contacts/friends/loved ones/adversaries as well.

I don’t know who is doing it. I just want to take this opportunity to encourage everyone who looks at my spewage each day to share them with whomever you think might want to see it, or should see it.

Maybe I’ll get another surge like the one I have just enjoyed.

Thank you in advance.

D’oh! It’s about a pardon?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am just slapping myself upside my own noggin.

Two blog posts have commented on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s goofy lawsuit that seeks to overturn the presidential election results in four states that President-elect Joe Biden won over Donald Trump: Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Now comes the chatter over the GOP Texas AG’s lawsuit. The dipsh** is angling for a pardon from Trump.

D’oh! Why didn’t I snap to that conclusion.

The FBI is investigating Paxton on allegations leveled by former top legal aides in the Texas AG’s office. They contend that Paxton broke the law by dishing out favors for a key political crony/ally/contributor. In come the feds to look more closely at the allegations. Trump, of course, has the power to grant a full pardon for any federal crime or suspicion of a federal crime.

That might explain why Paxton is launching this idiotic legal challenge. I have yet to see a serious legal or constitutional scholar suggest that the challenge Paxton is mounting has an ounce of legal merit. They have labeled it everything from a fishing expedition to a publicity stunt.

There well might be a pardon in the Texas attorney general’s future if Donald Trump gives a damn about what Ken Paxton is trying to do.

Reprehensible!

Country already scored a ‘victory’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump fired off this Twitter message today …

“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!” 

The “Texas … case” to which Trump referred is the moronic lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that seeks to overturn the duly cast votes in four states in the presidential election.

It’s not clear to anyone how Trump plans to “intervene,” whether as an individual or as a spokesman for his failed re-election campaign.

I just want to add this: The nation already got the “victory” it needed when it elected Joe Biden as its next president.

Paxton seeks to bask in some perverse glory

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have concluded, based on zero hard data and only on my inherent bias that I admit to freely, that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is hellbent on making a spectacle of himself.

He seeks to bask in some sort of perverse glory derived from Donald Trump’s idiotic pursuit of “widespread voter fraud” where none exists. Thus, Paxton has filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to overturn the free and fair election results in four states that cast most of their votes for President-elect Joe Biden in the just completed presidential election.

Paxton’s alleged “logic” is beyond belief.

He says the four states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — changed their voting rules in an unconstitutional fashion by allowing more voters to cast their ballots using the U.S. Postal Service. He wants the high court, therefore, to toss out those states’ election returns.

To its credit, the SCOTUS — with three justices nominated by Donald Trump already aboard — has declared already that another lawsuit brought by a Pennsylvania GOP member of Congress has no merit; it has tossed it aside with a single-sentence ruling.

So what the hell is Paxton trying to do here? I mean, the dude already is in trouble already. He is awaiting trial in Texas courts for securities fraud allegations. He also is being investigated by the FBI for allegedly doing favors illegally for a campaign donor. Seven key legal aides have quit or been fired by the AG after they blew the whistle on what they allege is illegal conduct.

The word on Paxton is that he was a mediocre lawyer prior to his election to the Texas Legislature, where he didn’t distinguish himself as the author of much key legislation. Then he got elected Texas AG in 2014 and was almost immediately showered with suspicion when a Collin County grand jury indicted him for securities fraud.

Now this? The AG must have a screw loose.

Let me be as clear as possible: Joe Biden won the election; there is no evidence of the kind of “widespread” fraud that Trump and his Trumpster Team allege. Even the U.S. attorney general, William Barr, has reached that conclusion.

Ken Paxton needs to stop meddling in other states’ affairs.

‘Yes’ on lifetime appointments!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s shout out a cheer for the U.S. Supreme Court and the Constitution that allows its justices to receive lifetime appointments as part of the federal judicial branch of government.

The court has tossed out with little comment yet another frivolous lawsuit that sought to get the Pennsylvania legislature to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The suit, brought by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, wants to hand Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden, who won them in a free and fair election on Nov. 3.

What is so gratifying is that the high court ruled unanimously against the complaint brought by the Trumpkin Kelly. That means Trump’s three appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — ruled against The Donald.

Hey, this is a big deal. Why? Because Trump declared it essential to have a nine-member court seated to enable him to win a close call in any complaint brought to challenge the results of the election.

Well, it wasn’t a close call. The justices, all of them, saw fit to toss this latest complaint onto the scrap heap where it belongs.

Yes, the nation’s founders had the right idea when they established a judiciary that should be as free as possible from political pressure.

Trump turns normal into exceptional

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A curious thought entered my noggin this afternoon as I watched the nation’s next president roll out his health and human services team for public review.

Joe Biden sounded so cotton-pickin’ presidential today. He sounded reasonable. He was careful. Circumspect. Cautious. Articulate. Knowledgeable about the challenges that await him.

The strange thought was this: Why is such a statement from a leading politician even worth mentioning? It’s because of what we have endured through four years of the idiocy that pours routinely out of Donald John Trump’s pie hole.

I have heard others say much the same thing as they, too, have watched President-elect Biden reveal his team. He has done so in careful increments. He speaks to us like a politician who actually cares to communicate with an entire country. He speaks of others’ suffering. Biden tells us repeatedly he will surround himself with aides and advisers who tell him what he needs to hear, not limit the messages to what he wants to hear. Joe Biden made that point once again today, with crystal clarity. 

You see, this is the kind of thing that were he coming after a normal president wouldn’t be worthy of any comment. Except that he isn’t. He is following an individual who has no sense of the gravity of the job he inherited. Trump has no historical knowledge of the office he occupied. Trump sees all relationships as transactional and communicates that perspective to us daily.

Donald Trump has done seemingly the impossible: He has turned something that should be routine into a cause to celebrate.

Therefore, I am cheering the pending arrival of a president who speaks to us the way the duly elected leader of this great nation should speak.

Imagine he had lived

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am recalling today a stroll my wife and I took some years ago in New York City.

We ventured to Central Park and found the memorial a grieving widow worked to have installed in the park. She called it “Strawberry Fields,” which happened to part of the title of a song that her late husband composed in the 1960s.

John Lennon died 40 years ago today at the hands of an assassin who ambushed him outside the apartment complex where Lennon lived with his wife, Yoko Ono, and their young son, Sean.

I won’t type the name of the lunatic who killed my favorite Beatle … because you know it already and I won’t sully this text with it.

Our stroll took us eventually to the Dakota, where we stood across the street and peered toward the gate where the gunman opened fire on John Lennon. That moment, looking at the murder scene, sent chills through me.

That was then. Four decades later I still grieve the loss of a musical genius and one of the bandmates who helped raise me.

If only John Lennon had been given a chance to live a long, joyful and music-filled life.

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