Category Archives: national news

national news

Sirhan gets parole … wow!

1 Comment

This bit of news is going to take some time to sink in.

I am still processing the announcement that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan will be paroled from the California prison system 53 years after he shot my first political hero to death in a hotel kitchen.

Sirhan murdered Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968 moments after RFK declared victory in California’s Democratic presidential primary. Sen. Kennedy would linger for a day before succumbing. Robert Kennedy was 42 years of age and well might have been elected president of the United States. Hmm. Do you think his tragic death might have changed history’s trajectory? We were fighting a terribly unpopular war and Sen. Kennedy wanted to end it.

Let me stipulate that this recommendation does not make parole a done deal. It needs further review and final approval by the governor. However, the absence of any objection from prosecutors and the support of RFK”s family members suggest to me that it’s likely to occur. That Sirhan will walk out of prison.

Oh, my. How does one deal with this?

Two of the senator’s surviving sons, RFK Jr. and Douglas, both argued on behalf of Sirhan’s parole Douglas Kennedy said it is time to give way to grace and forgiveness. How in the world does one argue with the logic from the son of one of U.S. history’s more revered political figures?

I had hoped the 77-year-old Sirhan would spend the rest of his life behind bars. That won’t happen. He reportedly will live with his sole surviving brother.

No word, of course, yet has come from Ethel Kennedy, the slain senator’s wife who was there in the hotel kitchen when her husband was struck down; she was pregnant in that moment with the couple’s 11th child.

I am still trying to roll this one around. I cannot yet reach a decision on how I feel about Sirhan’s pending parole.

All I am feeling at this moment is renewed pain over the loss I felt at that moment when we got word at home in Oregon that RFK had been shot. I remember watching the returns from California. The networks declared Bobby Kennedy the winner and I went to bed a happy young man. I had the pleasure one week earlier of shaking the senator’s hand at a chance meeting in a restaurant parking as he finished campaigning in the Oregon Democratic primary.

Then my mother woke me up. She told me to come downstairs. I watched the horror of the event unfold in real time.

I am not going to express joy for Sirhan Sirhan’s release. I am saddened all over again.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Flags come down, nation mourns

1 Comment

Flags all across Princeton, Texas, are down this morning.

President Biden ordered the flags at the White House and all federal buildings lowered to half-staff to honor the victims of the ISIS attack at the Kabul airport. It looks to me as though businesses and local governments all over the nation are following the lead.

Too often we have seen these flags lowered because of school shootings or some other tragedy involving gun violence in this country. This one is vastly different, but no less tragic to be sure.

Our Marines and an Army warrior died when a terrorist detonated a suicide bomb at the airport. He killed dozens o Afghans along with our heroes who were helping with the evacuation of Americans and our allies from Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover of that war-ravaged country.

Biden vows to end our evacuation on Aug. 31. I wish him well in that effort. There might be more terror attacks to come between now and then. The president vows to be on full alert to any hint of an attack.

He also has given the Islamic State warning. “We will hunt you down,” he told them, “and make you pay” for the misery they brought. I am quite sure many millions of Americans are going to hold him to that pledge.

Don’t let us down, Mr. President.

Meanwhile, we will grieve.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Get a grip, Newt

REUTERS/Mark Avery

Newt Gingrich told Fox News that President Biden is the most “incompetent” man ever to hold the office.

As usual, the former speaker of the U.S. House is wrong.

His hero, the 45th POTUS, is the most incompetent, the most corrupt, the most venal, the most immoral/amoral, the most indecent, the least qualified individual ever to sit in the Oval Office.

As is the case with this fire-breathing knuckle-dragger — Newt Gingrich, of course — he won’t acknowledge what most Americans know already.

Newt Gingrich: We have not seen a president this incompetent (msn.com)

Which is that the 45th POTUS should never again set foot in the White House.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

national news

Officer reveals himself

Now we know the name of the Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during the 1/6 insurrection.

His name is Michael Byrd, a lieutenant with the Capitol Police force.

Lt. Byrd is a hero. He stopped a woman who was trying to break through a door during the hottest moments of the riot. He fired a single shot at her. Babbitt died that day.

Now we also hear from Byrd himself that he has been the target of death threats, racist attacks (he is African-American), and has been called a “murderer” by the 45th president of the United States, in whose name the terrorists attacked the Capitol Building on 1/6.

Byrd spoke to NBC News anchor Lester Holt. He felt he wanted to reveal his identity to put to rest some semblance of the mystery surrounding the shooting of Babbitt.

I feel the need to mention three things about Babbitt. She was an Air Force veteran. She also was an ardent supporter of the 45th POTUS and a believer in the QAnon conspiracy insanity that drives so many of those who adhere to the cult of personality associated with the former Insurrectionist in Chief.

Babbitt was not “murdered” by Lt. Byrd. He was doing his job, which was to protect members of Congress against the angry mob that sought to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The most shameful consequence of all of this, of course, is the Republican lawmakers’ refusal to grant Congressional Gold Medals to the law enforcement heroes who stood in harm’s way to protect them.

One hero is Michael Byrd.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

House panel gets to work

U.S. House Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson is a serious man.

The Mississippi Democrat is so serious that he has decided to go for the jugular in his panel’s search for the why, how and wherefore of the 1/6 insurrection incited by the then-president of the United States of America.

The scope of the documents he is seeking is breathtaking.

He wants to know what POTUS 45 allegedly did to keep a grip on power after he lost the 2020 election to President Biden. He has seeking documents from the National Archives, the Pentagon, the White House, the ex-POTUS’s lawyers.

We all know what happened on 1/6. The former president encouraged an angry mob of terrorists to take back the government. They went to Capitol Hill shouting their desire to fulfill the former POTUS’s wishes.

This investigation in truth should be handled by an independent commission. The Senate Republican caucus blocked that event from occurring. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose the select panel and gave the chairman’s gavel to Rep. Thompson.

I wish the chairman well — along with the rest of the select panel — as they take the deep dive into what the hell happened that day and  as they search for recommendations to keep such a horrific act from ever recurring.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Still standing with POTUS

If my phone were to ring and I discovered it was a public opinion pollster, I would answer it and hope that the voice on the other end would ask me my view on the job President Biden is doing.

Do I favor or oppose how he is leading the country?

My answer: Yes … I would give him a favorable rating.

Those who disagree with that view, too bad. I’m sorry you feel the way you do. I make no apologies for feeling as I do about the job President Biden is doing while he leads this country through a global pandemic, seeks to repair the wreckage left by his predecessor and, oh yeah, withdraw our troops and our allies from Afghanistan.

I believe I said during POTUS 45’s term in office that there was nothing on Earth I could picture him doing that would make me think favorably of the job he did.

Conversely, I try to consider what President Biden could do to turn me against the job he is doing. One thing pops out immediately: sending in brigades of fighting forces back into Afghanistan … for starters. Yep, that would do it. So would reneging on his commitment to fighting climate change.

The Afghan War withdrawal surely could have been executed more smoothly. Then again, this country has zero record of ending conflicts cleanly that it has not won outright. The Vietnam War didn’t end the way anyone in this country wanted it to end. Even though our side won virtually all the battlefield encounters with the communists during that bloody war, we lost the political will to keep fighting.

The North Vietnamese army rolled into Saigon, took control of the government, renamed the city after Uncle Ho and the United States was left with trying to explain how it could leave all those allies behind.

President Biden’s national security team is working as near as I can tell to conduct a withdrawal of many thousands of Americans and Afghan allies. The Biden team is actually working — reportedly — with the Taliban to ensure a reasonably safe outcome.

I am not going to turn my back on the president — at least not yet.

Pollsters, if you’re out there, give me a shout. I’ll be glad to answer your questions and give President Joe Biden a thumbs-up on the job he is doing.

— johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Impeachment? Really, guys?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Congressional Republicans are looking for payback.

Given that the guy who ran for president under their party got impeached twice, they want to impeach President Biden if he doesn’t get all Americans and our allies out of Afghanistan, which has been taken over by the notorious Taliban terrorist group.

It’s looking as though the president might be able to head off any idiotic impeachment effort. American airplanes are ferrying Americans and Afghan allies out of Kabul at an accelerating rate.

At last count, more than 40,000 of them have been evacuated.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Biden will commit a “high crime and misdemeanor” if he leaves any American behind. Rep. Pat Fallon of Sherman, Texas — speaking to a town hall crowd in Rockwall the other day — said all House members should draft impeachment articles if Biden’s evacuation order falls short.

I thought Graham and Biden were pals. Not so with Fallon, a right-wing fire-breather who just joined Congress this year.

The 45th POTUS got impeached for two valid reasons: the first time for soliciting a political favor from a foreign head of state; the second time for inciting the insurrection on 1/6.

Joe Biden does not deserve to be impeached. This is a non-call.

national news

GOP faces a reckoning

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There can be no denying that the Republican Party is facing a reckoning.

It has to decide if it is going to remain on the track laid out by an individual who has corrupted a once-great party. Or will it return to matters of principle and public policy?

The individual who corrupted the party — the 45th POTUS — lacks any defining principle. Unless you consider revenge, spite and chaos to be principles that define a political party.

POTUS 45 had zero Republican Party policy experience when he entered the 2016 GOP primary campaign. He won the party’s nomination that year by hammering his foes into submission. Then he won the presidency — with a bit of help from the FBI and its infamous e-mail investigation. He also won because of incompetence in the Democratic nominee’s campaign.

The presidency became POTUS’s play thing. Many of his top campaign aides found themselves indicted on criminal charges. The corruption ran throughout the highest rungs of his political ladder.

Oh, and then he got impeached twice. Once for trying to coerce a foreign government into doing his political bidding and once for inciting an insurrection that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Many of the men and women who served with him have stood behind his corruption and his venality. For what? Someone needs to explain to me the strange grip this clown has over a party with which he had no prior knowledge or familiarity.

The 2022 midterm election is coming up. POTUS 45 wants to have a big time say in who gets elected. He wants to elect those who are blindly loyal to him. Oh, boy. If the party follows that course, it will consign itself — as well as the nation — to a future shrouded in darkness and corruption.

I am a good-government progressive who wants the Republican Party to rediscover its basis for existing and to debate the Democratic Party openly and honestly without the hatred that stains the rhetoric that comes from the one-time Liar in Chief.

Is that possible? For the nation’s sake, I hope so.

national news

Gen. Lee? Traitor!

1 Comment

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Gen. Robert E. Lee keeps creeping back into the news and onto social media platforms.

The late Confederate army officer still has his fans 150-plus years after his side surrendered to the Union Army to end the Civil War.

For the life of me I am having trouble understanding the infatuation with this fellow.

I will acknowledge that coming of age in Portland, Ore., far away from the actual fighting of the Civil War that I didn’t have a full understanding and appreciation for what transpired prior to the start of the shooting. I knew about Lee’s loyalty to Virginia. I knew that he had been given a choice: remain an officer in the United States Army or defect to the Confederacy, which had seceded and formed a “nation” of its own.

Lee chose the latter. He said “to hell with my country,” or something to that effect. He decided he would be loyal to his state. Some folks find honor in that. I do not. He committed an act of treason. Lee was disloyal to his country and ordered the men under his Confederate command to kill soldiers who were fighting to preserve the United States of America.

How can there be any honor in that? I find it impossible, the older I get, to see how this man continues to hold some sort of spell over those who worship his memory.

Public entities are seeking to remove vestiges of his presence. They want to take down statues erected in his honor. They want to turn these artifacts into museum pieces and explain this fellow’s true place in U.S. history, which in summary form is that he fought to destroy the United States of America.

That is honorable? I think not!

national news

Politics of the pandemic?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Whoever thought in a million years that an international medical emergency could devolve into a partisan dispute among leaders of the world’s most indispensable nation?

If you could foresee such a thing happening, then you are the smartest human being to ever walk this good Earth.

A pandemic erupted in late 2019. It spread around the world through that winter and into the spring of 2020. The U.S. president at the time downplayed the threat to human beings. Some of us believed his public dismissal. Others of us didn’t.

It has gotten only worse since that time.

We now argue over whether we should wear surgical masks to prevent being infected by the COVID-19 coronavirus. Politicians tell local authorities they cannot do things above what they declare to protect their constituents. Learned medical doctors and scientists are called “idiots” and “losers” by a former president.

We end up arguing along partisan lines over whether masks do the job. Republicans say “no.” Democrats say “yes.”

Oh, meanwhile, the disease keeps sickening and killing us. The U.S. death count is 600,000-plus. Are we worried? If not, we damn well should be.

The politics of the pandemic is beyond annoying. It is disgraceful that we would tolerate any short-shrift given to this disease by those — namely on the right and the far right — who dismiss it all as some sort of conspiracy.

We also have the vaccines.

Read my lips: The vaccines work! They are effective. They also are safe. Yet we hear from the goofballs on the far right — namely the QAnon cabal — about human beings turning into chimps because they get the vaccine.

What the … ? The only individuals who buy into that nonsense are the chumps among us who swill the Kool-Aid being offered by certifiable nut jobs.

We need to pull together to rid the world of the pandemic. The scientists know of what they speak. The politicians among us — starting with the immediate past president of the U.S. of A. — are know-nothing clowns.

We have an international medical crisis on our hands. The politics can be set aside for a day when we defeat the pandemic.