national news

How can this election be corrupt?

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

All this yammering and blathering from Donald J. Trump about a “rigged election” and “rampant voter fraud” keeps bringing me back to a single question.

Which is this: How in the name of national security, after all this nation endured with Russian hacking of our electoral system in 2016, could there possibly be a more secure election than the one we have just had?

Donald Trump lost his re-election bid to President-elect Joe Biden. His insistence that Biden won only because the election was “rigged” to produce that outcome is far more than laughable on its face. It is dangerous and demeaning.

Trump’s refusal to concede the results of the election is dangerous because it gives comfort to despots around the world who run nations hostile to ours comfort. It well might embolden them to do things that could undermine our national confidence even further. We are taking our eyes off the threats abroad, concerning ourselves with phony allegations of voter fraud.

His refusal also is demeaning to the thousands of state and local election officials who are charged with conducting these elections. They hold the responsibility of protecting our electoral system against “rigging” or other forms of corruption that the president of the United States — our head of state for God’s sake! — keeps suggesting has occurred.

President-elect Biden has a difficult enough task ahead  of him without the idiocy being fomented by his immediate presidential predecessor. That is what this is. It is idiocy of the lowest order.

As President Obama said on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, a president must always put the nation’s interests ahead of his own ego. Donald Trump is being ruled by his fragile sense of self-worth and in the process is putting our entire system of government in potentially dire peril.

And to what end?

If there was any reason to have confidence in the integrity of this election, the foolishness that erupted in 2016 provided it in spades.

Dear folks, we are watching the cultivation by Donald Trump of fake news in real time.

International news

Lift the Muslim ban, Mr. POTUS-elect

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

On the night he declared victory in the 2020 presidential election, Joseph Biden’s team announced plans for the new president to sign a series of executive orders on Day One of his administration.

One of them would be to life a ban on entry into the United States by travelers from certain Muslim-majority nations. Donald Trump issued that order early in his presidential term.

The new president wants to revoke that order. To which I say … yes!

FBI Director Christopher Wray has told us a stark truth about the nature of terrorist threats to this country. It is that the biggest threat comes from home-grown, corn-fed white supremacists and not from Muslim nations.

The new president realizes what the nation’s top cop, the FBI director, has asserted.

I don’t mean to suggest that this nation’s security team should just shrug and look the other way at any terrorist threat that comes from abroad. I do mean to suggest that Donald Trump issued an informal declaration of war against Islam, a point that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama sought assiduously to avoid when they were in office.

President Biden intends to revoke the Trump overstated declaration that Muslim countries pose a hideous threat. If we have learned anything since 9/11 I would presume we have learned how to detect and deal with international terrorist threats, especially from Muslim nations … which renders a ban on travelers from those nations to just an unnecessary show of presidential bravado.

national news

Biden’s unity pitch hits roadblock … from Trump!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I always knew that President-elect Biden’s promise to unify the country after four years of Donald Trump’s tenure as president would be a heavy lift.

What I didn’t know,  until just recently, was that Trump himself would be piling on the weights to make that effort even more difficult.

Donald Trump keeps insisting that Biden’s victory is the result of a “rigged election.” It is no such thing. The problem for the president-elect, though, is that so many millions of Trumpkins have bought into the clap trap that Trump is offering, not to mention the vast majority of Republican members of both congressional chambers.

Therefore, you have a situation with a Democrat– that being Biden — scoring a significant vote-count and Electoral College victory over the Republican incumbent, but with Trump’s “base” of sycophantic voters and politicians buying into the phony charge of “widespread election fraud.”

Call me a cynic, but Donald Trump has zero interest in uniting the country. He has not a scintilla of care for the damage he is doing by fomenting yet another lie. He blathers about “fake news media” endorsing Biden while at the same time offering his own fake news by suggesting voter fraud where none exists.

I have harbored some glimmer of hope that Trump eventually will concede in some fashion to the president-elect; my sense is that it won’t be a traditional concession … if it comes.

The longer this ridiculous game goes on, the harder it might get for Donald Trump to say publicly what the rest of us know already.

Which is that he has been drummed out of office!

I now worry about the worsening of the difficulty of the task of unification that awaits President Biden. What’s more, I am enraged that the future former president is putting his own narcissism in front of the nation’s future.

So help me, Hanna. Donald Trump is a dangerous man.

national news

Outrage set to persist?

2 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It appears the outrage that Donald Trump is fomenting is going to persist until the bitter end of this man’s hideous tenure as president of the United States.

He continues to say he won’t concede he lost to President-elect Biden. He continues to resist providing the president-elect’s team with the intelligence briefings they need to prepare to protect us from hostile powers. It is not known whether he will do the right thing and stop insisting the loss he suffered was because of a “rigged” election.

Oh, no. You can’t make this stuff up.

Trump lost in a free and fair election. It is arguably the most secure election in U.S. history. I mean, the shenanigans that occurred in 2016 set in motion safeguards that states and counties enacted to protect the sanctity of our democratic process.

Trump, though, continues to insist the election is “rigged.” It is nothing of the sort.

I am left simply to wish for Jan. 20 to come and go and for the new president to take the oath and begin the task that Trump is maliciously making more difficult: to unify a deeply divided nation.

Donald Trump is providing all the disgraceful examples we need to see of a man who was patently unfit for the office he now is about to surrender. Thank goodness for the democratic process.

national news

Trump poses existential threat to our security

3 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Forgive me for thrashing that so-called “dead horse,” but Donald Trump’s threat to our national security is being played out in real time during this transition to the Joe Biden administration.

Trump’s refusal to (a) acknowledge that he lost the election and (b) refuse to grant President-elect Biden’s team with intelligence briefings poses a potentially serious and dire threat to our national security.

Now we hear from a growing list of Republican politicians and former Trump aides clamoring for Trump to do the right thing. That would be to acknowledge the obvious, that Biden won the election and to start briefing Biden’s national security team on the key issues that threaten our beloved nation.

How does a president who ran for office on the pledge to “put America first” actually do this to a nation he says he loves?

Oh, I know the answer. It’s because this president loves the nation far less than he loves himself. He cherishes his own ego more than anything — or anyone — else on Earth. Of that I am absolutely convinced. That appears to be the driving force behind Trump’s gambit to deny his presidential successor access to the knowledge that all presidents traditionally have handed over to those who succeed them in office.

President Obama did so when he turned the office over to Trump in 2017. President Bush did the same thing for President-elect Obama in 2009. On and on it has gone.

Until now. That means that the president of the United States, the guy who pledged to protect Americans, has become our greatest threat.

national news

How would Trump cope with being stiffed by his predecessor?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to inform you that we all are witnessing in real time why prior government experience matters during a presidential transition.

President-elect Joe Biden is assembling a government without an ounce of help from the man he defeated, Donald J. Trump. Has that stymied Biden’s effort to form a team he wants to take off from a dead stop when he assumes the office on Jan. 20? Hah! Not even …

I am wondering out loud how Donald Trump’s team would have fared had President Obama had sought to stiff the new president’s transition effort. Trump had zero government or public service experience when he won the 2016 election. He brought not a hint of understanding of politics and public policy when he took on the most powerful public office on Earth. Would he have proceeded the way Biden and his team have done? Hardly.

Joe Biden’s vast government experience, including his vast network of contacts, sources, friends, allies, partners gives him a huge advantage as he seeks to craft a government team.

Yes, folks, we are watching in real time the value that prior government and public service experience brings to an endeavor as huge as the one that Biden is undertaking.

I don’t expect it to go seamlessly without any help or assistance from the outgoing president’s team. Indeed, there’s still time for Donald Trump to snap to the reality that reportedly is dawning on his closest advisers … which is that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

And that it is time for the outgoing president to make way for the new team.

national news

Don’t ditch Electoral College

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Call me a fuddy-duddy if you wish, or old-fashioned, or even a “strict constitutional constructionist.”

I am not going to climb aboard the  vessel that seeks to throw out the Electoral College.

You see, I happen to like the way we elect presidents. It’s the method concocted by the nation’s founders. Their intent was to create a more equitable distribution among the states. They intended to give more sparsely populated states a greater voice in selecting the president.

Has it worked perfectly? Well, no. It hasn’t. However, name any government policy that works perfectly and I’ll be willing to consider buying that bridge you’re offering to sell me.

I traveled to Greece in November 2000. You’ll recall how that election was hung up in the courts for weeks after Election Day. The Supreme Court ended up settling it with a 5-4 vote. Al Gore had more actual votes than George W. Bush, but Bush became president.

I had the challenge in 2000 of trying to explain to my Greek friends — most of whom are highly sophisticated government-watchers — how someone can collect more votes than the other guy but lose the election. I sought to explain as best I could the founders’ vision of what the Electoral College was intended to do. I think I made my point then.

Still, the debate rages on, even after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in both the actual vote and the Electoral College.

OK, the system ain’t perfect. In 2016, Hillary Clinton collected nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but she lost. We have the Bush-Gore election of 2000. Grover Cleveland outpolled Benjamin Harrison, but lost the 1888 election. Samuel Tilden lost the presidency in 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes in the same fashion.

By and large, though, the system works as the founders intended.

Consider that Nevada became a battleground this time around; it was just as critical to Biden winning as, say, Pennsylvania.

I am just not ready to toss the Electoral College system on its ear because of an occasional hiccup.

national news

Democracy is stronger than COVID

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to declare victory on behalf of our democratic government.

No, it has nothing to do with who won the presidential election. It has everything to do with the number of American citizens who voted while the nation we love in the grip of a killer pandemic.

The Joe Biden-Donald Trump election has drawn nearly 154 million Americans to vote for president. The previous high occurred four years ago when the Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton contest attracted more than 136 million total ballots. Oh, and get a load of this: This year’s election tally is going to grow as more ballots are counted each day.

This is worth saluting because we often gripe about voters who become lazy, or disinterested, or disengaged from the political process. Not this year, man!

Politicians mostly of the Democratic persuasion called on voters to cast their ballots. Vote by mail if you and you are concerned about exposure to the COVID virus, they said. Vote early, they implored us, to ensure your votes are counted.

It appears that the public heard the calls to vote. They responded with a turnout that no doubt will make history.

education news

School board betrays its constituents

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A North Texas public school board of trustees that is charged with setting policy for educating public school students has just failed an exam that truly doesn’t pass the so-called “smell test.”

The Lancaster Independent School District board is offering an abject lesson on how not to conduct public business. Other local governing boards need to listen up and pay close attention.

The Lancaster ISD board offered Superintendent Elijah Granger a new five-year contract worth $1.6 million and then bought him out five days later. That’s not the worst of it.

Oh, no. The worst is that the board, which bought him out with a 4-3 vote, isn’t disclosing the details of the maneuver. The three trustees don’t know the details. Nor does the public. No one knows how much money the public school district is shelling out to buy Granger’s contract.

I emphasize the word “public” because the public deserves to know the details, not to mention the three board members who dissented from the buyout vote.

As the Dallas Morning News said in an editorial published Wednesday, “There is no other way to look at this than a betrayal of parents, taxpayers and the trustees who were shut out from access to relevant information.”

One of the dissenting trustees, Marion Hamilton, sought to see the separation agreement, but was denied. That is outrageous!

School board members have declined to discuss the details of the buyout. There hasn’t been an explanation of why they voted essentially to fire the superintendent … not to mention explain why it would buy him out so soon after agreeing to the expensive contract. What in the world did he do from the contract signing and the separation? The public needs to know the details.

There’s a serious lesson to be learned here. I would hope all school districts, city councils or other governing bodies entrusted with the power to hire and fire government administrators would take notice of the clusterfu** being played out in Lancaster, Texas.

This ain’t good, folks. You have failed a key test of leadership … and to think you still set policy that establishes the education of public school students.

Shameful.

medical news

We’re still talking about COVID, Mr. POTUS

(Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I feel the need to remind you, Mr. President, of something you said on Oct. 24, about two weeks before you got thumped in your re-election bid.

You said everyone talks about “COVID, COVID, COVID,” and that by Nov. 4, “no one will be talking about” the disease that continues to infect and kill Americans.

OK, Mr. President. It’s now Nov. 13 and we’re still talking about COVID. Why? Because your administration’s shameful inaction on combating the killer virus has resulted in yet another ghastly and deadly spike in infection and death.

Haven’t you read the papers, Mr. President? We’re breaking records every day! For God’s sake, dude, the infection you kept telling us is “under control” is anything but under control. It is stampeding through our population like a herd of bison.

Does it fail to register with you, Mr. President, that your staff has been infected? Or that members of your Secret Service detail have come down with the disease? Or that you, your wife and your youngest son all were infected by the disease?

We’re still talking about the disease, Mr. POTUS! We’re going to keep talking about the disease for far longer than any of us want to talk about it.

This ain’t a hoax, Mr. President. It’s real. It is deadly … and you, sir, are responsible for continuing misery.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience