Category Archives: national news

national news

Some perspective, eh?

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A certain amount of context has been tossed aside in the discussion over whether to approve President Biden’s plan to “Build Back Better.”

We have become fixated on the number: 3.5 trillion … as in dollars.

What has become tossed aside is that the number that Biden and congressional progressives want would cover a 10-year period.

So, that figures to be a $350 billion expenditure annually to do a number of things: improve roads and bridges; modernize air travel; develop ship channels; improve Internet broadband service.

Here’s some more perspective. The United States of America boasts a $20 trillion annual economy, which suggests to me that $350 billion each year is like so much spittle in the proverbial bucket.

Congressional Republicans and some moderate congressional Democrats are wringing their hands over the amount of money that progressives want to spend. Again, I have to wonder: Why?

If the plan is to spread this expense out over a 10-year span of time, why are we quibbling over the total figure that in the grand scheme seems less relevant when you add some needed context to the discussion?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Patriots? Phooey!

Life is full of uncertainty. However, of this I am totally, unequivocally certain: I will go to my grave never understanding how people who take an oath to protect the Constitution and then defy it openly can call themselves “patriots.”

I am referring to the nimrods who continue to adhere to The Big Lie, that the 2020 presidential election was the product of theft, that it was “stolen” from Donald Trump by “deep state” forces that conspired to install Joe Biden in the White House.

These individuals call themselves patriots because they believe they are right and that the rest of us — the majority of Americans — are wrong in our assessment that the most recent presidential election was conducted fairly and legally and ethically.

The 45th POTUS continues to rant and bellow about a theft that never occurred. He drops broad hints about wanting to run again in 2024 to get it all back.

He calls for states to “audit” their returns from the 2020 election. The former Liar in Chief suggests that even after states complete their audits that he still won. He stands before crowds that cheer him on as he recites that utter nonsense.

These are “patriots”? These are Americans who believe in our system of government? These are dipsh**s cannot accept the notion of their guy losing a hotly contested election and then moving on to wage other fights on other issues?

These individuals are not real Americans. Sure, they are citizens of this country. They have the right to express themselves under the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech and expression. “Real Americans,” though, are those who live by rules of fair play and accept defeat when it is as obvious as anything they can see.

They are not patriots.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Clumsiness in full view

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Winston Churchill’s opinion of democracy is playing out in full view of the world at this moment.

The great British statesman said — and I will paraphrase it broadly — that “democracy is the worst form of government except all others that have been tried”

So we are now watching members of our Congress haggle, quarrel, cajole each other over how to avoid a debt-default crisis while at the same time haggling over how to improve our nation’s infrastructure.

My trick knee is telling me that somehow, some way and in some fashion the Democrats who run Congress are going to find their way out of the thicket. They have a key ally in the White House: President Joseph R. Biden, who spent 36 years as a senator. The president knows how to legislate.

Congressional Republicans, of course, are sitting on the sidelines. They aren’t part of this haggling, which is boiling down to a dispute between Democratic liberals and moderates.

It’s messy. It’s cumbersome. It’s the kind of governance that the 20th century’s greatest statesman — Winston Churchill — said would occur.

Excuse the cliche, but this really is a great country.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

‘GOP’ takes new meaning

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Attention, my friends in the Republican Party.

Your political organization, once known as the Grand Old Party, has acquired a new moniker. It’s called the Grubby Obstructionist Party.

Yes, the party that once was able to govern effectively working with Democrats in Congress and the White House, has become a party intent on furthering some nitwit political agenda.

The GOP has decided to block moves to bump up the debt ceiling. It won’t allow the nation to pay its bills. It is going to block President Biden’s Build Back Better legislative package — which would be paid out over several years. It is now threatening to shut down the government … again! Why? Because its intention is to do harm to a duly elected president.

Democrats are scrambling at this moment to figure out a way to work around their GOP colleagues, the same colleagues who saw no problem with boosting the debt ceiling when one of their guys was in the White House and when they controlled the legislative branch of government.

Now it’s changed. Except that it hasn’t really changed. The obligations are the same now as they always have been.

The Grubby Obstructionist Party — whose U.S. Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said the debt ceiling must be increased but won’t allow his Senate GOP caucus to be part of it — has shown itself to be unfit to govern.

Disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Will No. 45 be nominated?

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Some pundits/commentators/thinkers I respect a great deal are throwing a major scare into this old man’s body.

They are suggesting that at this moment Donald J. Trump is the “favorite” to be nominated by the Republican Party to run for president in 2024.

Let’s ponder that for just a brief moment.

The House of Representatives impeached him twice. The first time was for soliciting political favors from a foreign government; a clear violation of the law, not to mention the Constitution. The second time was for inciting an insurrection against the government as Congress sought to ratify the Electoral College returns from the 2020 presidential election; another clearly defined “high crime and misdemeanor.”

He skated twice because not enough Senate Republicans had enough courage to stand by their oaths of office and convict him.

The former POTUS has hijacked the GOP. He is holding it hostage to his whims and machinations. He is the man, the myth, the legend in his own mind.

He is making noises about wanting to run again.

If he does and if the GOP is flat-out stupid enough to nominate this clown once again — after all the damage he has inflicted on the government he once vowed to protect — then, ladies and gents, we are in far more trouble than I ever imagined.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, national news, State news

Our border isn’t ‘open’

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How many times do I have to say this: We do not have “open borders’? 

That is the mantra being recited time and again by far right wing opponents of President Biden, who continue to insist that our borders — particularly our southern border — have been flung wide open for anyone to pour into the country.

Let’s review what just happened along the border with Mexico near Del Rio, Texas.

Thousands of Haitians congregated under an international bridge. They were fleeing corruption in their country as well as fleeing the destruction brought by a killer earthquake.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott deployed Department of Public Safety officers to the border to assist Customs and Border Patrol agents in managing the chaotic scene. U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials were on it, too.

Now the crowd is gone. The migrants have been sent back to Haiti, sent to third countries or are being processed to achieve legal immigrant status.

Is that a signal that we have an “open border”? No. It isn’t!

Our borders are no more “open” than they have been during the terms of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter … I’ll stop there.

Yet the critics of Joe Biden seize on the chaos brought forth and are offering the canard about “open borders” as a weapon to use against him. One of those critics, former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, writes in Newsweek, “We are encountering more people at our southern border than any other time in the last 21 years. Two months in a row, the numbers exceeded 200,000; in August 2021, the numbers represented a 317 percent increase over August of last year.”

Biden Has Effectively Opened Our Border. He Is Once Again Vindicating Trump | Opinion (msn.com)

OK, Dr. Carson. How are they responding to that influx? We aren’t just letting ’em pour in, doc! Get a grip here.

Yes, the Biden team needs to do better. Yes, they need to make their response more efficient. And, yes, we cannot tolerate the sight of mounted CBP officers herding Haitians like cattle as they seek shelter from the misery they are fleeing.

However, the border isn’t “open.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

No to ‘executive privilege’

Earth to Donald John Trump.

There is no “executive privilege” available to the former POTUS as he fights to prevent a House select committee from issuing subpoenas for key aides in its hunt for the truth behind the 1/6 insurrection.

The former POTUS said this, according to The Hill: “We will fight the Subpoenas on Executive Privilege and other grounds, for the good of our Country, while we wait to find out whether or not Subpoenas will be sent out to Antifa and BLM for the death and destruction they have caused in tearing apart our Democrat-run cities throughout America,” the former president said in a statement.

It’s not gonna work, Mr. Former Liar in Chief.

Executive privilege fight poses hurdles for Trump | TheHill

You see, there is no executive privilege for former POTUSes.

The House of Representatives formed a select committee to root out the cause and effect of the insurrection that erupted on 1/6. It also intends to seek recommendations on how to prevent attacks from recurring. I wish the panel well in that search.

As for the former Insurrectionist in Chief, he is whistling in the wind if he thinks he can find a way to prevent the likes of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former chief strategist Steve Bannon from testifying before the House committee.

President Biden said as well that he won’t allow such executive privilege requests to be processed through the White House.

The former president incited the riotous mob to storm Capitol Hill on 1/6. Its intent was to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College result of the 2020 election that chose Biden over his predecessor. It failed, but the riot managed to inflict grievous damage to our democratic process.

So the House select committee’s work will require members of the former POTUS’s administration to stand before it, take an oath to tell the truth and then to divulge what they knew and when they knew it. The former president’s effort to prevent that from occurring is doomed to fail … as it should.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news, national news

‘Missing white woman syndrome’?

The late Gwen Ifill once lamented the double standard the media apply to missing-person cases.

Pretty white women get lots of media attention, the esteemed journalist noted, while women “of color” get, well, passed over. The stories are good for a day, maybe two or three … then they vanish.

The media now are obsessed with whoever killed Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old woman whose body was found in Grand Teton National Park, Wyo., where she had been traveling with her boyfriend.

The cops have declared the boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, a “person of interest” and are now search high and low for him in Florida, where he returned several days ago … without Petito.

Ifill’s observation about the media makes an important point. Yes, Petito deserves the coverage she is getting. Then again, so do all the missing women, and men, and children — regardless of their race or ethnicity — deserve the attention that’s being leveled at the fate of one young woman.

Charles Blow wrote this in the New York Times:

In 2004, at the Unity journalists of color convention in Washington, Gwen Ifill coined the phrase “missing white woman syndrome,” joking that “if there is a missing white woman you’re going to cover that every day.”

It is not that these white women should matter less, but rather that all missing people should matter equally. Race should not determine how newsroom leaders assign coverage, especially because those decisions often lead to disproportionate allocation of government resources, as investigators try to solve the highest-profile cases.

Opinion | Gabrielle Petito and America’s Obsession With Missing White Women – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

It speaks quite graphically at how far we still have to travel to reach some sense of balance in the way the media handle certain stories.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news

Who seeks to ‘rig’ election?

Oh, how I want to take the findings of an audit in Arizona seriously.

It’s hard when the audit of the 2020 presidential election in that state is done by an outfit with no experience conducting such an audit. They were brought in to find fraud that didn’t exist.

Now we hear from Cyber Ninjas that the Maricopa County, Ariz., returns were legitimate and that Joe Biden won that state’s electoral votes while winning the presidency.

Which brings me to this point, which is that the 45th POTUS keeps yammering about the 2020 election being “rigged.” It wasn’t. The Cyber Ninjas finding illustrates it nicely. The only “rigging” being done is by the 45th POTUS who keeps yapping about vote fraud. He is trying to overturn a legitimate election that he lost by more than 7 million ballots.

It all points to yet another irony of this individual’s brief stint as POTUS. He bellowed about “fake news” while pulling fake news out of his rear end almost daily. Now he is hollering about a rigged election while seeking to rig it all by himself.

How does anyone on this good Earth possibly take this clown seriously?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

‘Fraudit’ proves Biden won after all

Stop the presses!

The so-called audit of Arizona’s election returns in 2020 have delivered a stunning blow to the former Liar in Chief: The Cyber Ninjas have determined that Joe Biden won Arizona’s electoral votes in a fair-and-square vote.

The Cyber Ninjas is the civilian group charged with combing through the Maricopa County returns to find enough votes to overturn the Arizona results, which Biden carried narrowly in November 2020.

GOP-backed Arizona election review confirms Biden 2020 win | TheHill

But … what do you know? Cyber Ninjas — with zero election audit training in its background has determined there was no fraud in 2020 and that President Biden’s vote totals hold up.

To be fair, I cannot imagine what my response would be had the Cyber Ninjas had reached another conclusion. I might go bonkers, bananas. I might be bumfuzzled, bamboozled and bombarded with emotion.

I am left now to wonder if the Cyber Ninjas had taken the criticism of its lack of credentials to heart. Might it have just tossed in the towel and delivered a summary that it knew would be palatable to those of who knew what was obvious from the get-go? That President Biden’s victory in Arizona, while not overwhelming, was sufficient to stand up under close scrutiny.

I won’t offer a full-throated cheer to what the Cyber Ninjas have decided about the returns in Arizona. Its effort to overturn an election was a monumental waste of time and money. Perhaps, too, these findings will fill officials elsewhere with courage to stand up against The Big Lie.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com