Category Archives: national news

national news

Big Lie channels Fake News

The most maddening aspect of the Big Lie into which Donald Trump keeps breathing life is how the irony matches the Fake News mantra that the future POTUS made so popular on his way to winning the presidential election in 2016.

Think about this for a moment.

Trump kept hammering the media for promoting “fake news” even as he was uttering nonsense related to President Obama’s place of birth and questioning whether the 44th president was eligible to run for and then serve in the nation’s highest office.

The Trumpkin Corps gobbled it up and swallowed it, not grasping the insane irony of their man’s pronouncements condemning the media for doing their job.

Then the former Liar in Chief lost the 2020 election. He didn’t concede. He has never congratulated President Biden for his victory. Never offered to help him or support him in any fashion. He said the election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him.

The irony is that The Donald has engaged in the most blatant act of electoral theft in U.S. history. He incited the 1/6 insurrection. He didn’t lift a finger to end it as the rioters were beating police officers and sh***ing on the Capitol floor. He has allowed his minions to try to install fake electors to overturn the results that showed Biden winning a clear Electoral College victory. Oh, and he bullied state election officials in Georgia to “find” enough votes to let him win that state’s presidential election.

A “stolen” election? Is this clown serious?

Of course not!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Meadows is the new No. 1 culprit?

Mark Meadows may become — and pardon the reference — a marked man as the House select committee exploring the 1/6 insurrection zeroes in on those who were responsible for what transpired on that terrible day.

Meadows served as White House chief of staff at the end of Donald Trump’s term as POTUS. We are beginning to learn that Meadows well might have been involved up to his eyebrows in the planning of the riot that turned terribly violent.

There is one big problem, though, in trying to learn the whole truth about what happened. Meadows isn’t complying with House demands to testify. The select committee still needs to determine whether to levy a contempt of Congress charge against Meadows.

It needs to get real busy. Real fast.

We’re hearing now about text messages that Meadows sent and received involving some of Trump’s closest allies in Congress: the likes of Reps. Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Louie Gohmert.

Mark Meadows appears to the common denominator among all those GOP nut jobs.

We hear also that he expected violence to erupt on Capitol Hill before the riot actually occurred. What did he do about it? Not a damn thing! Apparently … 

The White House chief of staff is a high-powered job, even when the POTUS at the time is a certifiable control freak. It will be fascinating for me — and millions of others — to see whether this No. 1 Trumpkin is held to account for what many of us believe he did or didn’t do when the mob of traitors sought to subvert our democratic process.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Our guns are safe!

Eric Swallwell makes his point with crystal clarity. He writes in an op-ed that appeared on Newsweek.com:

For decades, one of the most tried and true scare tactics by the gun lobby is that the government—specifically Democrats—are coming for your guns. These misinformation campaigns have been used for years to scare law-abiding Americans into thinking they are going to be put under government surveillance to confiscate their guns.

I must stipulate a couple of points. One is that Swallwell is a Democratic congressman and a former prosecuting attorney from California who, in 2021, presided over the second impeachment of Donald J. Trump. He is a fierce partisan.

The second point is that I am one of those “law-abiding Americans” who owns a couple of firearms. I’ve had ’em for many decades. One of the long guns is a .22-caliber rifle my father gave me when I was about 12. The second one is a 30.06-caliber scoped rifle that had been re-bored from its original life as a .303-caliber Enfield; Dad gave that one to me many years ago.

The .22 is a single-shot bolt-action weapon. The 30.06 carries a magazine of five rounds, with a sixth bullet in the chamber. They’re both hidden deeply in our North Texas home.

Why spell out those details? Because as a law-abiding American citizen who — by the way — is angered and appalled at the gun violence that plagues this nation, I have no difficulty with efforts to control the flow of firearms onto our streets.

President Biden Does Not Want to Take Your Guns Away | Opinion (newsweek.com)

I also am acutely aware of what the Constitution’s Second Amendment says about firearms.

It just galls me to the max when I hear demagogues try to place nefarious motives in the hearts of minds of others with regard to guns and their place in modern American society.

The gun lobby seeks to frighten Americans. The lobbyists appear to be winning the argument. Too many Americans are afraid of an enemy that does not exist with regard our guns.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Hatch’s death saddens me

A strange sense of sadness overtook me this evening as I learned of the death of the longest-serving Republican U.S. senator, Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Why am I so sad? I think it is because Hatch, who left the Senate in 2018, embodied a gentler time in American politics. Did I agree with his policy views? Hah! Not even close! Hardly ever!

However, this conservative lawmaker — whose name appears on hundreds of pieces of legislation that became law — exemplified the ability to work with Democrats. He knew how to find common ground, where to look for it and how to craft it into meaningful legislation.

He said this in his farewell address to the Senate: “The last several years I have seen the abandonment of regular order … Gridlock is the new norm. And like the humidity here, partisanship permeates everything we do, … All the evidence points to an unsettling truth: The Senate, as an institution, is in crisis, or at least may be in crisis.”

Yep, it’s in crisis, all right. It is in crisis because the Senate has turned into a pit of vipers, along with the House, with members of both chambers expressing outright fear of working with members of the other party.

That is nothing close to the “regular order” that Hatch and other senators cherished.

He was a principled conservative, but he was a gentleman, too.

Thus, the sadness at his death.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, Sports news

Tell the whole story, Sen. Cotton

There you go. This well might be the most compelling rebuke of Republican opposition to the teaching an element of our national history that I have seen so far.

It comes to me from a good friend who share it on social media. The “Tom Cotton” referenced in the top passage is the GOP senator from Arkansas. Cotton has been opposing what he and other congressional Rs refer to as “critical race theory.”

Of course, Sen. Cotton is quite correct to salute the accomplishments of Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball. He smashed through that barrier 75 years ago this season. “Today we honor him and his lasting legacy,” Cotton wrote via Twitter.

Yes! We do!

But hold on! What about the 50 years of MLB’s existence prior to Robinson joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947? Dare we also discuss in our public school classrooms the reasons why Robinson and other African Americans were denied the opportunity to play big league ball with white players? Do we ignore the inherent racism in MLB’s policy banning black players? Do we also ignore the epithets that fans hurled at him as he sought to play baseball in big league ballparks?

There’s a wonderful back story that needs a brief telling. One of Robinson’s closest friends on the Dodgers was a shortstop from Kentucky, Peewee Reese. When the Dodgers took the field in Cincinnati in 1947, the fans heckled Robinson mercilessly, calling him every vile name you can imagine. Reese walked over and stood next to his friend, threw his arm around his shoulders and stared down the crowd until the noise stopped. That act cemented their friendship.

Do well tell our children about that event? Of course we should!

Yet the likes of Tom Cotton would have us ignore that element in our great nation’s otherwise storied history.

No nation in the history of our planet has come of age without suffering through painful chapters. The United States of America has a few of ’em. Racism is a story that needs to be told to our children … and no, it won’t make them “hate America.”

So, if we’re going to salute and honor Jackie Robinson, we need to tell the whole story of what this great man was able to accomplish. Some of it is painful. Still, let’s tell it … and teach it to our children.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Herschel Walker: dumbass

Gosh, I hate speaking badly about a guy I used to admire when all he did was pack a football and run with it for thousands of yards during his career.

However, that ex-gridiron star, former Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker of Georgia, is now running for the U.S. Senate and all I can say about him is that he might be the biggest dumbass running for high office in this election cycle.

Walker is running as a Republican. He wants to succeed Sen. Rafael Warnock, one of two Democrats elected to the Senate in 2020 from Georgia.

I have heard some of the nonsense that comes from Walker’s pie hole. One utterance, caught my attention. He recently said while disparaging evolutionary science that “If man came from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?”

Isn’t that just a real knee-slapper? Actually, that isn’t even an original quip. I heard the late comic George Carlin say it many years ago. So, Walker not only is a dumbass, but he’s a dumbass who cannot offer many original thoughts.

Sen. Warnock has done a creditable job in the Senate. He has become a leading voice of the Senate’s progressive caucus. He also has plenty of what one could call “cred” among African Americans, given that he is African American. What’s more, when he is not writing federal law, he preaches at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the Holy Word to his parishioners.

It occurs to me that this contest could offer voters in one state a chance to stop the dumbing-down of Congress by returning a man with considerable intellect — Sen. Warnock — and rejecting a man with next to zero understanding of how government works … and who cannot even produce an original quip.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

We are headed for catastrophe … seriously!

Excuse my tendency to push the proverbial panic button with regard to the midterm election, but I have to declare my fear that we could be headed for governmental catastrophe if Congress flips from Democratic to Republican control.

Indeed, I am concerned about Mitch McConnell become majority leader if the Senate flips. Today, though, it’s House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy who has earned the bulk of my wrath. McCarthy truly gives me the heebie-jeebies.

McCarthy wants to become speaker. If the House flips to his party, then he stands a good chance — I fear! — of being chosen speaker. What does that mean for those of us who favor good government? It means the House well could launch a torrent of probes designed to embarrass Democrats.

It well could become payback time in the People’s House.

Why do I worry about McCarthy? Because we now have a possibly presumptive speaker who has been recorded on audio saying something he actually well could deny he said, which was that he intended to encourage Donald J. Trump to resign from the presidency in the wake of the 1/6 insurrection.

He said as much to Rep. Liz Cheney. Then he denied saying it — until an audio recording surfaced.

This guy is a coward. So is Mitch McConnell, to be candid. Both of these individuals blamed Donald Trump for “provoking” the Capitol Hill riot on 1/6. Then McCarthy voted against impeaching Trump and McConnell voted to acquit him in the Senate trial that commenced after the second impeachment.

Will any of this occur? The tides are moving toward a GOP blowout on Election Day. That the president’s party would suffer a congressional election setback is not unusual. It is usually the case. Both legislative chambers have razor-thin Democratic majorities, so it won’t take much for the GOP to take control of the legislative branch of government.

I just worry for the sake of good government, though, that the next speaker of the House could be a cowardly liar who backed away from his condemnation of what the world saw occur on 1/6 and then sucked up to the Insurrectionist in Chief.

I don’t want the catastrophe to occur. Nor should anyone who values this democratic process of ours.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

RNC loses will to fight

It is clear to me that the leadership of a once-great political party has lost its will to stand and fight for what it believes.

The Republican National Committee’s decision to bow out of future presidential debates — at the primary and general-election levels — has demonstrated to me that the party has been taken over by cowards.

Think of it. The titular head of the party, Donald J. Trump, is the former Coward in Chief. He bitched out loud during his term as president that the press is the “enemy of the people.” He yapped and yammered preparing for presidential debates with the fellow who beat him in 2020, Joe Biden, that the joint appearances were stacked against him.

Trump has managed to project his cowardice onto the leadership of the RNC, now led by Ronna Romney McDaniel. Here’s an example of how McDaniel shows her cowardly nature: She used to be proud to wear the name of her uncle, Mitt Romney; these days, because The Donald despises Romney, she has dropped the “Romney” from her name and now goes by Ronna McDaniel. It’s a little thing. Then again, it really isn’t.

Now the RNC has decided that it won’t rely on journalists to moderate future presidential debates. Its decision, therefore, to pull out of future events sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates — a non-partisan group — suggests it has swallowed the swill served by The Donald.

The nation has come to rely on these joint appearances to help voters make decisions on who is best suited to lead the country. And, yes, at times individuals emerge from these events whom no one expects. I am willing to argue that Donald Trump pulled off that very surprise during the 2016 presidential primary season.

So, what happened to The Donald? He lost re-election in 2020 and promptly blamed everyone else for his loss, ignoring the undeniable truth that the presidency he ran failed. He threw blame at the feet of the debate organizers.

Now we have the Republican National Committee continuing to adhere to the whims and machinations of the twice-impeached and defeated POTUS.

Cowards. All of ’em!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

They want this guy back?

Just think: a lot of Americans want to see this guy returned to the office he denigrated, disrespected and devalued damn near each day he occupied it.

I saw this social media meme and wanted to share it here. I don’t know its source; it doesn’t matter. I believe its content, although I need to put a couple of the barbs in some proper context.

The bit about “killing more Americans than Hitler” and losing “5 million jobs” is attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, which wasn’t entirely Donald Trump’s fault. Yes, he did downplay the seriousness of it as the killer virus began its path of death and destruction through the nation and around the world. That helped contribute to the calamity that befell the nation in 2020 and 2021.

And yet, millions of Americans continue to say he “told it like it is.” No, he didn’t. He told it the way he wanted us to believe it to be.

I should add that the 45th POTUS also told an estimated 35,000 lies, put many of our international alliances in jeopardy, mocked people with disabilities and prisoners of war and — this is the best one — became a Vladimir Putin enabler by refusing to admit the Russian tyrant is a killer and by refusing to condemn him for interfering in our electoral process.

Puh-leeeze …

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Yeah, listen to Newtie

Newt Gingrich makes me laugh, albeit derisively, as he tries to offer advice and a critique of the state of today’s Republican Party leadership.

The former (disgraced) U.S. House speaker doesn’t think much of GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership style. He likes the notions being pitched by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and California’s U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy.

Newt Gingrich questions McConnell’s strategy for Republicans: ‘As bad as Pelosi’ | Just The News

Sigh …

I am left to wonder: What in the world is Newt Gingrich’s track record as a legislative leader?

It stinks, man!

Newtie became House speaker after the GOP took control of Congress in the 1994 Contract With America election. He managed to work pretty well (for a time) with Democratic President Bill Clinton. The two men found a way to hammer out a balanced federal budget. Good deal, yes? Of course!

President Clinton then got re-elected in 1996 and in 1998, Democrats retook command of Congress, which of course occurred on Gingrich’s watch as House speaker.

Then came the scandal that resulted in President Clinton’s impeachment. Who led the impeach-him chorus? Newt Gingrich! Oh, but wait. In real time, Newtie was boinking a staffer, cheating on his second wife, while at the same time decrying President Clinton’s behavior with the White House intern.

Gingrich eventually resigned from the House; he married the woman with whom he was taking the extramarital tumble. He went to work for Fox News and has become a royal pain in the patootie ever since.

So, when this clown critiques today’s political leadership, I am, umm … left to snicker.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com