Category Archives: national news

national news

‘What are we doing?’

Chris Murphy is able to speak with a rare form of credibility on the tragedy that has struck once again in the United States.

Murphy is a Connecticut Democrat who represents a state in the U.S. Senate that has felt the pain we are feeling tonight in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre.

“Just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African-American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands,” Murphy said. “Our kids are living in fear every single time they set foot in the classroom because they think they’re going to be next. What are we doing?”

Murphy stood on the Senate floor today and pleaded with his colleagues to do something to stem the violence that erupted in South Texas. More than a dozen children and a teacher are dead along with the lunatic who opened fire at Robb Elementary School.

‘What are we doing?’: Sen. Chris Murphy gives emotional speech on Texas elementary school shooting (msn.com)

A decade ago, another madman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killing 20 first- and second-graders along with six educators before killing himself. President Obama called it the darkest day of his two terms in office.

What did we do then? Nothing!

What are we doing now? Sen. Murphy is asking the most relevant question possible in this time of national grief.

I am one American who will not accept any excuse that our Congress cannot enact laws that can do something to make it more difficult to commit these types of crimes. I will not listen to those who continue to proclaim that the Constitution prohibits any legislative remedy.

They are wrong and they should be ashamed.

Murphy continued: “This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school, thinking that they might be shot that day. Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids, as I have had to do about why they got locked into a bathroom and told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America, and it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue.”

This madness cannot  continue.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

First Amendment violation? Nope!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ….

First Amendment, U.S. Constitution

Of course, the First Amendment says a lot more, but this is the first clause in the first attempt to improve the nation’s governing document.

I want to bring this up because of something I posted earlier about whether we can tax religious organizations if they seek to coerce or bully politicians into enacting certain public policy.

I believe religious organizations that endorse candidates for public office or — in the case of the San Francisco Catholic archdiocese — deny communion to officials over their abortion stance make them fair game for taxation.

Public policy = taxation | High Plains Blogger

I’ve seen some chatter out there that such a taxing policy would violate the “separation between church and state” spelled out in the First Amendment. I shall disagree with all due respect.

The religious exemption is quite specific, as I read the Constitution. It declares only that Congress must avoid enacting laws that establish a religion. The clause makes no mention of tax policy. It says only that the government cannot force people to believe a certain or faith or prohibit them from the freedom to worship — or not worship — as they please.

It appears to my reading that the Constitution grants considerable leeway to tax religious organizations if their leaders venture into the political realm.

The late Rev. Jerry Falwell entered the arena in the 1980s and 1990s with his constant attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton; so did the Rev. Franklin Graham with his endorsement of political candidates; Catholic clergy have sought to deny politicians communion over abortion policy for decades; churches with predominant African American congregations have been staging political rallies for many years.

All of them are exempted from paying taxes.

To ascribe some sort of constitutional prohibition from taxing these entities is to expand what the First Amendment declares beyond anything I recognize.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Immigration reform … anyone?

President Biden’s decision to repeal a Trump administration policy designed to curb immigration into the country in the midst of a pandemic is being met with opposition from both sides of the great divide.

Title 42 aims to block immigrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. while a pandemic is raging. Biden decided to yank it, but he is getting pounded for it. I believe he acted prematurely.

The point of this particular post, though, is how the overarching need for immigration reform is being trampled by issues of the moment.

There needs to be comprehensive, thorough and complete reform of our immigration system. George W. Bush sought it during his two terms as president, as did Barack Obama during his two terms. Donald Trump? He didn’t go there.

Joe Biden has talked openly about reforming the system, making it easier for immigrants to seek asylum if they are looking for refuge from oppression. Now he has muddied it all up by repealing Title 42, a policy pushed onto the books when the pandemic began sickening and killing human beings all around the world.

The so-called Dreamers need protection from deportation. These are immigrants brought here illegally as children by their parents. They have grown up, come of age in this country — the only country they have known! Many of them face deportation because our immigration policy simply doesn’t allow for humanity in treating these individuals as U.S. residents.

The Trump administration also mucked things up by separating children from their parents at the border in yet another inhumane demonstration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials got pilloried for their handling of the separation matter, drawing criticism from those seeking to dismantle ICE. That’s a bad call. ICE needs to be mended, not ended.

Immigration reform, sadly, is one of those issues being buried by the headlines of the moment, namely the Ukraine War and the critical shortage of baby formula.

We live in a nation founded by immigrants. It long has functioned under an immigrant-friendly policy. We need a return to the philosophy our founders used to create this great nation.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news, national news

Now it’s Trump vs. Pence

A weird political back story is being pushed to the forefront on the eve of the Georgia Republican Party primary election.

Donald J. Trump endorsed former U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s effort to win the party’s gubernatorial nomination. Former Vice President Mike Pence endorsed Gov. Brian Kemp’s bid for re-election.

The smart money at this moment says that Kemp is going to roll to an easy victory over Perdue. Which means that Pence is going to trample Trump in the fight for whose candidate gets Republican voters’ nod.

Trump vs. Pence, therefore, is going to end in a technical knockout — for the former VP … and possible rival to Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

This is really rich, man.

Trump got angry with Kemp because the governor wouldn’t buckle under Trump’s pressure to “find” enough votes to turn the state’s electoral result from Joe Biden’s column to Trump’s. So now the ex-POTUS is backing Perdue … sort of. You see, he now has washed his hands of Perdue’s bid because the ex-senator is trailing so badly that Trump doesn’t want to be associated with the losing candidate.

All Gov. Kemp did in the wake of the 2020 election was follow the law. He refused to pressure the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, to do Trump’s bidding. Trump doesn’t believe in the rule of law; he believes instead in the “rule of keeping himself in power.”

If my voice mattered in Georgia — which, of course, it doesn’t — I would be pulling for Mike Pence’s guy over the dipsh** Donald Trump has endorsed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Hoping public hearings bring movement

Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House of Representatives 1/6 select committee, is going to convene a series of public hearings in early June.

The aim is to reveal to the public the nuts and bolts of what committee members have been hearing in private for seemingly forever. They have heard testimony about how Donald J. Trump orchestrated efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — the one that Trump lost to Joe Biden. They have heard how Trump watched the insurrection unfold on Capitol Hill and did not a damn thing to stop it for more than three hours.

We’re going to hear from witnesses who have first-hand knowledge of what Trump knew, when he knew it and what he did about it.

Will any of this move the needle? Will it swing public opinion dramatically in favor of what the panel is seeking to do, which is to determine who is responsible for that riot and how to prevent such a thing from ever recurring.

I know this much: I intend to watch as much of it as I can from the comfort of my North Texas man cave.

I doubt my mind will change, if you get my drift. Still, it’s going to make for some compelling political drama.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Let’s wait on the political obit

Before we start dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on President Biden’s political obituary in the wake of the upcoming midterm election, let’s revisit a couple of recent historical events … hmm?

President Clinton won election in 1992. The midterm election occurred in 1994 and you know what happened. Republicans took control of both congressional chambers for the first time in 40 years. They flipped dozens of House seats. Newt Gingrich became speaker.

What happened in the 1996 presidential election? Clinton won re-election in an Electoral College landslide.

OK, now let’s look quickly at what occurred in 2010. President Obama took office after the 2008 election. He had a Democratic Party majority in Congress. Then the 2010 midterm occurred. Republicans delivered what Obama called a “shellacking.” The GOP took control of Congress.

Oh, but wait! The 2012 election ended with President Obama winning re-election. The margin for Obama wasn’t as impressive as the victory scored by President Clinton.

So here we are today. President Biden and Democrats are facing strong headwinds moving toward this year’s midterm election. Republicans are poised to seize control of both congressional chambers. If they do, they will follow historical precedent.

Is that the end of the line for Joe Biden? Nope, not even …

You see, today’s GOP is now populated by election deniers, followers of the Big Lie fomented by the Liar in Chief. The GOP is fully capable of messing up what the voters appear ready to grant them, which is control of the legislative branch of government.

Given the quality of the rhetoric coming from the cultist who leads the Republican Party and the blind fealty to his blathering that his followers exhibit, I am betting President Biden and the Democrats won’t surrender anything.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Walls closing in on Trump

Surely there are others who believe as I do that the 1/6 House committee, the Department of Justice and perhaps a local district attorney or two are getting close to dropping the hammer on the most recent former president of the United States.

DOJ has asked for committee transcripts taken during about 1,000 witnesses’ testimony; a Fulton County, Ga., grand jury has been impaneled to examine whether Trump pressured state officials to find votes to overturn election results; we hear now about handwritten notes from Trump plotting ways to overturn the election — that Trump lost to Joe Biden.

This man, Trump, is one dangerous dude.

Lock him up!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Loony bin wing strikes back

The loony bin wing of the Republican Party comprises two Texas congressmen who were among just nine House members to vote against legislation that aims to fast-track baby formula which — you likely have heard — is in critically short supply.

Reps. Louie Gohmert of Tyler and Chip Roy of Austin voted “no” on a bill that seeks to grant women on federal assistance greater access to the formula.

Texas is among the worst-hit states in this current crisis. President Biden has just invoked the Defense Production Act to facilitate delivery of the formula to families with infants.

The Texas Tribune was unable to obtain a comment from Gohmert. Roy delivered a message. The Tribune reported: “The only way to get more formula to American families is to fix the crony policies that prevent more U.S. companies from producing it, remove barriers to innovation, and allow imports from trusted nations; the legislation Democrats put forward does none of that,” he said. Calling the Biden administration “demonstrably incompetent,” he called the shortage “the direct result of unnecessary federal regulations and of a bloated bureaucracy that failed to recognize the problem before it spiraled out of control.”

Two Texas Republicans vote no on bill to help poor mothers get formula | The Texas Tribune

Well, Congress was able to act in that rare bipartisan fashion to approve the legislation, no thanks to the stubbornness of two Texas Republicans.

Shame on them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Paging Rex Tillerson … hello?

Of all the individuals from the Donald J. Trump administration who have fallen off the grid, one of them stands out to where I want to know what he must be thinking about the trouble that continues to swirl around the ex-POTUS.

Rex Tillerson. Perhaps you recall he was Trump’s initial secretary of state. Trump nominated the tough-talking Texan, the one-time Exxon-Mobil chief executive officer to lead our diplomatic corps. He didn’t last very long in the job, about 13 months.

He called Trump a “fu**ing moron,” never denied saying it and then got canned via Twitter message that Trump fired off.

Tillerson wasn’t an effective secretary of state, to be sure. How could he be, given that he reported to a numbskull who undercut him at every turn?

And, yes, he was right about the moronic status of the then-POTUS.

What in the world is this fellow thinking these days as we watch the 1/6 committee zero in on Trump, his key aides and the events that led to the insurrection against the government?

He probably doesn’t wish to be thrust back under the glare of the political spotlight. Some of us, though, want to hear what’s on his mind and in his heart.

Are you out there, Rex?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Step aside, Texas GOP

Texas Republicans have taken their share of hits from critics over the quality of the candidates they nominate for public office.

I am going to pronounce at this moment that the Texas GOP has been eclipsed in the loony bin category of political nut jobs by their colleagues in Pennsylvania, where a true-blue 2020 election denier has been nominated to run for governor of that great state.

Doug Mastriano is now the GOP nominee Pennsylvania governor. He served in the state senate. His foe this fall will be Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democrat who ran unopposed in his state’s primary.

Far-right election denier Mastriano wins GOP race for governor in Pennsylvania (msn.com)

Mastriano, to be brutally candid, is a seriously dangerous man to run one of the nation’s most populous and important states.

He believes President Biden and Democrats stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. He would get to appoint the next secretary of state in Pennsylvania and would be likely to find a fellow denier to lead that state’s election in 2024.

He tried to get fake Trump electors seated for the certification of the 2020 results in Pennsylvania; Biden won the state’s electoral votes, but Mastriano sought to overturn those results.

Oh … my.

I now will declare my own preference for Pennsylvania governor. Josh Shapiro must win to preserve the rule of law and to save the democratic process in one of the states where it all began in the United States of America.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com