national news

Don’t swing and miss, Mr. AG!

Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and ex-federal prosecutor, has issued a stern warning to the 1/6 House select committee.

It is that if it recommends criminal charges should be filed against Donald J. Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection on 1/6, it had better have it buttoned up and secure for a conviction.

The committee — or Attorney General Merrick Garland — cannot afford to “swing and miss” on this matter if an indictment is to be issued.

Christie, a one-time Donald Trump GOP presidential primary opponent who then became an ally of the POTUS, possesses strong opinions and is able to articulate them sharply and cogently.

He does not believe that Merrick Garland ultimately is going to seek a criminal indictment against Trump. Why? It carries too much risk of a failed prosecution, Christie said this past weekend.

I agree with Chrisie on one point: The House panel and the attorney general cannot afford to get this one wrong. I will disagree, if only nominally, with whether Garland is going to wimp out on seeking an indictment.

Merrick Garland, to my eyes, appears to be a careful lawyer. He is studious and fair, or so his friends have said about him. He also is meticulous and careful to dot every “i” and cross every “t” before proceeding.

That makes me believe an indictment, if it comes, will be ironclad.

That is my hope … and I’m sticking with it to the finish line.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Boebert: ‘no’ on infrastructure bill, ‘yes on this project

Lauren Boebert is one of the Republican nut jobs who populate Congress. She opposes President Biden’s plan to improve the nation’s infrastructure, calling it “wasteful garbage.”

Oh, but she sure likes a bridge planned for her Colorado congressional district.

Which is it, Congresswoman Boebert? Are you for it or against it?

The bridge project is planned for Glenwood Springs. She sent Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg a letter declaring her support for the project.

I haven’t yet heard her justification for opposing the total bill but wanting the particular item to be completed.

Rep. Lauren Boebert called Biden’s infrastructure bill ‘wasteful’ and ‘garbage.’ Now she wants $33 million in infrastructure funding for a new bridge. (msn.com)

I will admit in all fairness that this sort of duplicity occurs all too frequently in Congress. Many congressional Republicans have opposed Biden’s spending initiatives, then they take credit for it when the money comes to their district.

It’s kind of disgusting.

Then again, Rep. Boebert is quite well known — even during her brief time, so far, in Congress — for bizarre behavior and demonstrably stupid rhetoric.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

State news

Texas GOP: gone bonkers

It’s as official as I can determine it: the Texas Republican Party has spun off its axis, it is out of its collective mind, it has been taken over by the Donald J. Trump cultists, the believers in The Big Lie.

The state GOP has concluded its convention in Houston and has declared that President Biden is not “legitimately” elected to the nation’s highest office. The 2020 election, the state GOP said in its resolution, is too “rife” with fraud.

Now comes the question: Does the Republican Party have proof of that preposterous allegation?

The answer: No! It does not!

Hey, the state GOP don’t need no stinkin’ proof! It just swallows the swill served up by the former Snake Oil Salesman in Chief, who has defamed the nation’s electoral system since the moment he lost the 2020 election.

Fed up and fired up: Texas Republicans meet in a climate of mistrust, conspiracy and victimhood | The Texas Tribune

The convention had plenty of lowlights. Such as when conventioneers booed U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, as staunch and devoted a Republican as anyone in the convention hall. His claim to infamy? He sought to work with Democrats in crafting a bill that seeks to curb gun violence. You can’t do that, senator … say the diehard cultists who now dominate the Texas Republican Party.

I’ll be brutally honest. I never thought I would see this day in the evolution of the Texas political system. I moved to Texas when it was still dominated nominally by conservative Democrats. Then the “red tide” began to swell in the mid- to late 1980s. Mainstream Republicans began winning public office.

A Republican governor, George W. Bush, scored a lot of points across the spectrum through his ability to work with Democrats who still controlled the Legislature in the mid-1990s.

Those days are gone. I hope not forever. We have now a state GOP dominated by know-nothings, fruitcakes and nut jobs … which more or less mirrors the Republican National Committee.

The believe in The Big Lie. They purposely spread its falsehoods. Therefore, the Texas Republican Party is populated by liars.

Shame on them, and shame on those who put the liars in charge.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Pelosi is not part of this story

I generally don’t like responding to Internet trolls, but one guy who follows my blog keeps insisting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should’ve done a better job of “securing” the Capitol prior to the 1/6 insurrection.

Here’s what I found out: The Speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. That’s the responsibility of the Capitol Police Board, which oversees the US Capitol Police and approves requests for National Guard assistance. Jane L. Campbell, president and CEO of the US Capitol Historical Society, says that “the Speaker of the House does not oversee security of the US Capitol, nor does this official oversee the Capitol Police Board.”

This comes from a CNN fact-check of a comment that came from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest congressional defenders. To be sure, I am certain my blog follower won’t accept that the answer comes from CNN, which he likely considers to be a tainted news outlet, a purveyor of “fake news.”

My point, thus, is this: Speaker Pelosi is not part of the problem that befell the Capitol Police as its brave officers fought with the traitors who sought to overturn the 2020 election on 1/6.

She might have her share of faults … as a fallible human being. Capitol security isn’t one of them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Accountability is essential

There can be no doubt over what must be the outcome of the 1/6 congressional probe.

It is that people in the highest levels of our government must be held accountable for their action — or inaction — on that terrible event in our nation’s history.

Yep. That’s you, Donald John Trump!

Trump says the televised hearings have drawn “terrible ratings.” You would expect such a shallow analysis from someone who made his living as a “reality TV” celebrity before entering politics in 2015.

But the truth is — as I survey it — that the hearings have delivered a wide range of evidence that suggests that Trump’s insistence on fomenting The Big Lie about the 2020 election produced the assault on the Capitol Building that sought to overturn those results.

Trump knew what he did was illegal, that it was unconstitutional and that it was immoral. Yet he persists to this very day to suggest there was widespread vote fraud in 2020 when — in plain fact — there was none.

He must be held to account for what he sought to do.

It will fall on Attorney General Merrick Garland and his legal team to tie all the loose ends together prior to making a decision on whether to seek indictments against Trump.

I hope he sees what many of us have seen.

That the former president of the United States is a criminal who needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Oh, these costs …

Not long ago I posted a blog item that recalled the good old days when Dad would ask the gas station attendant to pump “a buck’s worth of regular” gasoline into his car.

At 25 cents per gallon, that bought Dad about four gallons of fuel. He could run on that for, say, a weekend.

Well, today I pulled into a Shell station in Farmersville, Texas and pumped 4.546 gallons of diesel fuel into Big Jake the Pickup.

The cost of a little more than four gallons of fuel today … roughly the same amount of fuel for which Dad paid a buck?

Twenty-five dollars!

This makes me so mad … I could just spit!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Indict him, Mr. AG!

The more I consider the ramifications of what is transpiring in Washington, DC, the more convinced I become that Attorney General Merrick Garland must hold Donald Trump accountable for his actions as president of the United States.

Reporters asked Garland if he is watching the televised hearings of the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection. He said he cannot watch all of it live, but will catch up with all of it later; then he said we can “rest assured” that his prosecutors are watching it intently.

The evidence, to my eyes, appears to be mounting that implicates Trump in conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. He knew The Big Lie was wrong, but kept telling it. He knew that Vice President Pence had no authority to overturn the electoral result, but kept hectoring the VP to do it. The mob of traitors threatened Pence’s life, and Trump knew that, too, but he did nothing to stop the violence.

Merrick Garland said no one is above the law. Where I come from, when someone says “no one,” he means every human being on Earth … and that includes the president of the U.S.A.

So, if the evidence leads the attorney general to the former POTUS’s mansion in south Florida, that compels him to ask a grand jury to indict the crooked man.

House committee members keep talking publicly about having “enough evidence” to recommend a criminal prosecution. My one wish is that they would stop saying such things so loudly; it tends to make my heart flutter in nervous anticipation.

Still, I have listened to the evidence presented during the three days of televised hearings and have concluded that AG Garland has enough to proceed.

Donald J. Trump needs to be held accountable for the hideous crisis he has launched. He has broken the law by pressuring state election officials to “find” votes that would reverse an electoral result. He has threatened the existence of our democratic process by telling The Big Lie.

Now he has possibly engaged in witness tampering by suggesting that he would issue blanket pardons to the 1/6 insurrectionist traitors if he (God forbid!) returns to the White House.

I am waiting anxiously to see if the attorney general agrees.

Please, Mr. AG, make me happy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

military news

Audie Murphy: hero who belongs to us

We toss the word “hero” around too generously at times.

However, I want to take a brief look at the real thing, an actual hero who happens to belong to a community near where my wife and I have lived for the past three years.

Farmersville — in eastern Collin County — claims Audie Leon Murphy as one of its famed sons. Why not? When he enlisted in the Army during the height of World War II, Murphy had the Army inscribe “Farmersville, Texas” as his hometown on his dog tags.

This weekend, Farmersville welcomed back its annual Audie Murphy Day celebration. The city had put the ceremony on the shelf for the past two years as it fought off the coronavirus pandemic.

The ceremony honors a young man who in January 1945, at the age of 21, saved a village in France from a German armored unit. He fought the Nazis virtually single-handedly. He earned the Medal of Honor for his heroism.

Murphy did not become filled with self-aggrandizing glory. Oh, no. He remained a humble man. He said often during his short life on Earth that the “real heroes are the men who didn’t come home.” Murphy died just short of his 46th birthday in a plane crash in western Virginia.

It’s more than just a little cool that one of our communities can claim a national icon as one of its own. Indeed, Murphy became the most decorated fighting man to serve in World War II. He received more than 30 combat medals, most of them for exemplary valor.

He knew what they meant. He wore them to honor the men with whom he served and those he watched die on the field of battle.

Audie Murphy was a hero to the nth degree and this weekend, Farmersville, Texas, was able to salute one its own.

entertainment news

Sir Paul is (gulp!) 80?

As a general rule I don’t use this blog to comment on public figures’ birthdays.

Today, though, I will make an exception and offer a brief salute to a musician who helped raise me, who helped guide my musical taste well into adulthood. I refer to the 80th birthday of Sir James Paul McCartney.

You know who he is. He comprised one-fourth of the world’s greatest band, The Beatles, along with the late John Lennon, the late George Harrison, and Sir Ringo Starr.

I have seen Sir Paul perform three times. First time was in 1965, in Portland, Ore., at the Memorial Coliseum; he played with his aforementioned bandmates. The second time was in 1993 at the Houston Astrodome, where he performed as a “solo” act with his band. The third time was in 2019 at Globe-Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

As I have noted many times over many years, the boy can still play. He can still rock ‘n roll with the best of ’em.

To think he’s 80 years young and still going strong … wow!

They say it’s your birthday, Sir Paul. Thanks for all you did to make me the man I am today.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

This isn’t ‘normal’

Make no mistake that I will go to my grave wondering how in the name of sane thought certain congressional Republicans can compare the 1/6 insurrection to a normal “tour group” walking through the Capitol Building.

Yet … they are. They continue to insist that despite what our “lying eyes” are telling us, the attack on our nation’s Capitol was no big deal. The traitors who smashed through windows, waged hand-to-hand combat with Capitol cops and defecated on the floor bore no resemblance to a “normal” tour group.

The televised congressional hearings continue to engrave in our memories that the frontal assault was organized as such and carried out just as radical groups intended.

What continues to astound me is that the congressmen and women who barf out the nonsense about 1/6 have voters back home who actually endorse the perversion that pours out of their respective pie holes.

This is a great country. Its greatness, though, is being stained — indelibly, I fear — by the nimrods conducted the insurrection against our democratic process.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience