national news

No, Glenn Beck … you’re mankind’s enemy

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Glenn Beck has enlisted in Donald Trump’s hate-the-media regiment, proclaiming that those with journalism degrees are the “enemy of mankind.”

Well, with all due outrage, I want to counter that right-wing blowhard blather. Glenn Beck and those of his ilk are mankind’s real enemy. The enemy does not exist within the ranks of reporters who do their job with dedication, who risk their lives quite literally covering news in danger spots around the world.

The enemy happens to be, in my view, half-baked talk show gasbags who purport to be the font of all knowledge but who just have the gift of gab that enables them to spew their garbage over the air.

That’s you, Glenn Beck.

Beck said this, among other things, on his show today, according to DeadState.com: “You are an enemy to man’s freedom,” Beck continued. “What you have done will be remembered a hundred years from now when maybe, possibly — possibly, men are free again after what you have done, you will be remembered in not a kind way.”

Beck needs to check his ego at the door.

The press is doing precisely what it always has done. It is holding government officials and others in power accountable for their words and deeds. They are performing an essential act in a functioning democratic system of government.

Shame on you, Glenn Beck … if you have anything in that ticker of yours that understands the word “shame.”

Donald Trump

‘Rage’ ends with … rage

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Bob Woodward crossed a line that reporters don’t usually dare to cross. He delivered a stinging rebuke of the subject of a book he has just written.

“Rage” chronicles Donald Trump’s deception — among other things — regarding the pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. We hear from Trump’s own voice how he “downplayed” the pandemic so as to avoid “panic” among Americans. He undersold the threat even though he knew it would be a killer of many thousands of Americans.

Woodward, the legendary Washington Post reporter who, with Carl Bernstein, unraveled the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, couldn’t resist the temptation to offer a scathing indictment on Donald Trump at the very end of “Rage.”

“When his performance as president is taken in its entirety,” he intones, “I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

OK. I happen to agree with him. So do millions of other Americans. To be fair, millions of other Americans believe Trump is the greatest president in history. I believe those folks are tragically mistaken.

Do I condemn or condone what Woodward wrote at the end of his latest book. I will condone it, but with a caveat: He no longer can be assigned to work on any aspect of a future story on Donald Trump being reported by the Washington Post.

Woodward said he consulted with his wife, Elsa, who edited his work. He talked to other editors, book publishers, colleagues at the Post. They all agreed that he had to keep that ending in the book.

Woodward told the truth as I have known it all along about Donald John Trump.

national news

Trump campaigns against himself

Photo by Alex Brandon/AP/Shutterstock
By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

We are witnessing what might become the most curious re-election strategy ever concocted.

Donald Trump seeks a second term as president by campaigning against his own record. He will say he has done things he hasn’t done. Trump will insist that all is going well in a country beset by a killer pandemic and an economic collapse. Trump will contend that we have ended street violence when in fact it is as bad as it’s been in 50 years.

All of this demonstrably verifiable. How in the world does Donald Trump seek to tell this nation that life is good when it clearly is nothing of the sort?

He cannot do it. Does that guarantee that Joe Biden will defeat him in the presidential election that is just 47 days away? Not at all. Trump has proven himself capable of electoral magic tricks, which he pulled off in winning the White House in 2016.

Trump keeps boasting about creating the greatest economy in U.S. history. He didn’t create a thing. He inherited an economy on the rebound. What happened? Well, the pandemic arrived in early 2020 and it all went straight to hell. Meanwhile, Trump talked it down, fed us a ration of lies about how he had the virus “under control.” Yep, and the nearly 200,000 deaths that have ensued didn’t really occur.

Street violence? He told us in his 2017 inaugural that the “American carnage” would end. It hasn’t. African Americans have died at the hands of police officers. Other Americans have protested those deaths. The protests have turned violent. More Americans have died. And, oh yes, we also have suffered through mass shootings in churches, night clubs, shopping centers. Yet the president insists he will restore “law and order.” If not now, when?

I am waiting to hear a vision from Trump about what he intends to do in a second term, which I hope with all I have within me won’t occur. Instead, I keep hearing about what he has done in the unfinished term when my own eyes and ears tell me a totally different story.

The record is out there for all to see.

national news

Would he dare skip the inaugural?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Given that Donald Trump has exhibited a seemingly bottomless pit of boorishness, I cannot get the following thought out of my mind.

Just suppose Joe Biden is elected the nation’s 46th president. Is it possible that the 45th president would skip the inaugural in a demonstration of maximum pique and petulance?

Trump keeps yammering about a “rigged election” in the event of a Biden victory. I cannot stop thinking about whether he truly believes it and whether he would be act on that belief by not showing up for the ceremonial transfer of power from one president to the next.

I mean, the Constitution doesn’t require the outgoing president to sit there and listen to the new one offer a grand vision of what he intends to do.

Moreover, it wouldn’t be an unprecedented act. President John Quincy Adams didn’t attend the inaugural for the man who beat him, President Andrew Jackson. But geez, that was in 1829! It was a bitter campaign and I guess Adams never got over the mean things Jackson said about him.

Other campaigns have produced plenty of bitterness. I recall the 1977 inaugural of President Carter, who in his opening remarks to the crowd, thanked President Ford for all he had done to “heal our land” after Watergate. That was a tough race, too. The men became fast friends for the remainder of President Ford’s life.

Donald Trump, though, harbors the deepest, meanest, most authentic sense of personal animus of anyone I’ve ever witnessed.

I will not predict such a thing from occurring, but merely am saying that should Joe Biden become President Biden, I wouldn’t be surprised to witness the ceremony occurring without Donald Trump anywhere to be seen … or (thankfully) heard.

medical news

Mr. POTUS … shut up!

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am running out of ways to say with any degree of decorum what needs to be said out loud and with all due vigor.

Mr. President: Shut the fu** up!

He has contradicted medical experts all along during this fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have sought to offer expert analysis of how to protect us against the killer, only to have Donald Trump slap them down. How in the name of medical expertise they can continue to work for this guy is beyond me.

Now comes the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another pretty renowned physician named Robert Redfield.

Dr. Redfield told a congressional hearing this week that a vaccine being developed to prevent the coronavirus won’t be available until second or third quarter of 2021. Trump, though, keeps yapping about it being available by late this year.

What does Trump know that the head of the CDC not know? Not a damn thing! Indeed, Dr. Redfield seems quite certain in his prediction of when a vaccine would be available for general distribution, yet Trump said that Redfield is “confused” and that he “didn’t understand the question.”

Good grief. I heard the question. I watched Redfield’s response. He was bright-eyed and alert and answered it firmly.

So we’re supposed to ignore the analysis of a highly trained medical professional and heed the word of a liar/political hack?

No thanks. I’ll pass on that one.

I just want the president to shut his mouth. I want him to stop talking to me. He has nothing to say that I want to hear.

This individual is putting millions of Americans in dire jeopardy if they choose to heed his word over the word of an individual trained specifically to tell us the truth … even when it doesn’t fit a particular political narrative.

International news

Peace deal is worthy, however …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s talk briefly about a peace agreement between Israel and two neighboring Arab nations: the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Donald Trump is hailing the agreements his administration brokered as a sea change event. Israel will open embassies in the UAE and Bahrain for the first time in the history of Israel’s existence.

Hey, it is a big deal.

However, let’s put this in a bit of context. Israel has not been at war with either country. It has gone to war with others in the region, to be sure. Jordan, Egypt and Syria come to mind immediately.

To be clear, Israel also has peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt. They were brokered years ago by preceding presidential administrations. Indeed, the Israel-Egypt peace agreement ended up costing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat his life when he was murdered by Islamic extremists while watching a military parade.

I had the privilege of spending more than a month in Israel in May-June 2009. I had a chance during that time to speak with many learned Israelis. We spoke of tensions in the region between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and the Gaza Strip. No one I talked to 11 years ago ever mentioned the UAE or Bahrain as nations that Israel simply needed to forge a peace agreement.

I do not intend to denigrate the peace agreements forged between Israel and its two Arab neighboring states.

I do intend, though, to add a bit of context to the settlements. They’re important, but I don’t believe in the grand scheme they matter to nearly the extent that the Trump administration suggests.

Now, if the Trump team hammers out a peace treaty with, say, Syria and Iran … well, then we’ll have reason to celebrate.

national news

GOP at war with itself

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_9@hotmail.com

The Republican Party is at war with itself.

Its elected leadership cannot gather up the courage to stand against a president who ostensibly represents the party, but who says things about despots and tyrants that are anathema to traditional GOP values.

The “other” wing of the party comprising former elected officials and assorted public figures has formed various political action committees and organizations whose mission is to defeat Trump in this year’s presidential election.

Which side should win this fight? I am pulling for the latter wing of the GOP to come out on top.

You have former Republican campaign operatives and assorted pundits and ex-pols joining something called the Lincoln Project, which by its name tells you that they represent the party of the 16th president of the United States, the great Abraham Lincoln.

The cadre/cabal of elected GOP officials has disgraced itself — yes, with a few notable exceptions — by cowering before Donald Trump.

Trump has remained silent about reports of Russian goons paying bounties for the lives of American servicemen and women killed by the Taliban. He has reportedly called service personnel “suckers” and “losers” because they choose to don the military uniform. Trump has denigrated the service of war heroes, such as the late Sen. John McCain. Now we hear from Trump himself that he “downplayed” the coronavirus threat even after telling iconic reporter Bob Woodward that he knew all along it would kill a lot of Americans.

The silence among those in public office is deafening and shameful. Yet they persist in their tacit defense of Trump merely by declining to condemn him in the strongest terms possible.

On the other side are those with no political axe to grind, or no political constituencies to please. They stand up to a man who prior to running for president had zero public service experience and only a passing acquaintance with classic Republican orthodoxy.

How this internecine warfare plays out will depend in large part on the presidential election outcome. My hope is that the good guys — the true Republicans who cannot stomach another four years of Trump — win this fight.

national news

Trump likes those authoritarians?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well, that Bob Woodward is revealing a lot about Donald Trump, much of it we knew, but much of it also is so shocking to hear coming directly from Trump himself.

Such as his admission to Woodward that he prefers dealing with authoritarian leaders. Of course, I use the word “authoritarian” with some caution. The term doesn’t come close to describing the heavy hand used in places such as North Korea, Russia, Turkey and the Philippines, all of which are governed by despots/tyrants/killers.

They also seem to curry favor with Trump, who in the past has praised them for their, um, “strong leadership” and other goofy terms of endearment.

Woodward is making the news/talk show circuit these days, talking up his new book “Rage,” which has revealed how Trump lied to Americans about what he learned in the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. He downplayed the impact of the virus to us publicly, but stated to Woodward as early as February that we were facing a killer virus.

This authoritarian preference, though, seems to suggest a sort of projection of Trump onto the style employed by these other world leaders. It’s as if he wants to be just like them.

Except for this little restraint: The U.S. Constitution limits presidential power, meaning that Donald Trump cannot exert the kind of authority he seemingly would like to exert.

If only Trump would read the nation’s governing framework.

national news

Trump tries rhetorical magic tricks

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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Wow! I couldn’t believe my ears.

A young woman asked Donald Trump at an ABC News town hall meeting why he lied about the seriousness of the pandemic that was bearing down on the nation.

Trump’s answer was astonishing. He said he didn’t “downplay” it, but “up-played” the seriousness of it by acting immediately to shut down travel from China, where the virus supposedly originated. His quick action at the front end of the pandemic saved “millions of lives,” he told her.

Well … what do you know about that?

We happen to have his own voice recorded. It’s on the record forever and ever telling legendary reporter Bob Woodward that he did “downplay” the pandemic. “I still prefer” to downplay it, he told Woodward. Why? He said he didn’t want to “cause a panic” among Americans.

Holy crap, Mr. President!

What in the name of rhetorical flim-flammery is this guy trying to pull on us?

He lied to us. He stood there and told Woodward that the virus was a “killer” that would be worse than the most “strenuous flus,” and then told the public two weeks after revealing that information that the disease was “under control” and that it would be just like the flu.

That’s what I call “downplaying” the severity of a killer virus.

And so … Donald Trump lied once more to a young voter in front of millions of Americans.

Mr. President, we aren’t the rubes you seem to think we are.

national news

Trump endangers his fervent base

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Don’t you just know that Donald Trump doesn’t give a rip about the health and well-being of those who continue to fawn over his idiotic rants?

He is conducting indoor campaign rallies. The fans he attracts are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, most of them without masks. They’re cheering his pronouncements, booing his references to the “fake news” media.

He is denigrating Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s care and caution against exposing his own fans to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump is not to be derailed. He will continue to stage those rallies. They will be indoors. They’ll be full of the Trumpkin Corps faithful.

They also well might cause a serious spike in infection and, God forbid, death among those who ignore social distancing and masks.

Does any of this matter to Donald Trump? Hell no!

Is any of this a reason to perhaps rethink whether you want to support this guy’s bid for re-election to a second term as president? He says he cares about you.

The truth is he doesn’t.

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