Category Archives: national news

national news

Mask-mandate issue takes strange turn in Austin

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What in the world do we make of this news?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the king of the no-mask-mandate realm of Republicans politicians, has been diagnosed as carrying the COVID-19 virus. He attended a political gathering in Collin County where — reportedly — there wasn’t a mask to be seen on anyone’s puss!

The governor is not showing symptoms. His wife, Cecilia, has tested negative. Those closest to the governor are undergoing tests. Abbott is isolating within the Governor’s Mansion.

Two thoughts come to mind immediately.

First, I wish Gov. Abbott a speedy and complete recovery. Really. I do. I do not want anyone — even pols who pi** me off with their reckless anti-mask-mandate rhetoric — to suffer from this disease.

Second, it is fair to wonder whether a positive test for a potentially fatal disease might turn Abbott from being a mask-mandate denier to someone who understands why local community leaders need the flexibility to issue mask mandates for themselves.

OK, I “wonder” about it. Will it happen? I doubt seriously that Abbott is going to reverse himself … just because he has tested positive for a virus that can be fended off by a face mask.

Abbott has been handed a bit of a public-relations setback with this COVID diagnosis. It counters the judicial support he got from the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court that has upheld his no-mandate authority, saying that he has the power to tell local governments they can do nothing more than what he allows them to do. I hate disagreeing with the learned justices … but they’re full of crap-ola!

Dallas public school officials are continuing to issue mask orders, along with their colleagues in Fort Worth, Houston and Austin. Our school leaders in Princeton, where my wife and I live, are leaving it to parents to decide; it turns out I see a lot of masks on children as they play in the school yard down the street from our house … which pleases me greatly.

There surely will be a lot of tittering over Gov. Abbott’s COVID diagnosis. I won’t go there. I intend to focus on his stubborn refusal to allow local officials determine the best way to protect their constituents against a disease that could kill them.

DC riot, national news

Optimism put to test

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Those of you who know me best will understand that I am an eternal optimist. I tend to see the best in people; too often, I admit that they let me down.

My wife tends to look more skeptically at individuals she meets for the first time, which is smart in that it saves her the grief of dealing with disappointment.

My optimism extends also to the state and strength of our nation, which I admit fully and freely is undergoing many stresses that threaten its very fabric.

The pandemic continues to ravage our population. We are ending a war in Afghanistan and are watching the bad guys seize the government they once ran. We have a former president of the United States whose cult following continues to wreak havoc on our democratic processes.

Will any of these factors individually doom our nation? Will they do so collectively? Can we stop any of these things from reaching critical mass? Can we stop them all?

No and yes to the first and second set of questions. At least that is how I see it.

Our framers crafted a government built to withstand these challenges. They sought to create “a more perfect Union.” They knew better than to seek absolute perfection. They knew the nation under construction in the 18th century would be an ongoing work in progress likely for as long as the republic existed.

I am going to retain my optimism even as we struggle with these battles. Indeed, any concession to the worst-case scenarios out there would consign me to a level of anxiety that I am not sure I could handle.

So, perhaps my optimism is a self-defense strategy. Whatever. I’ll maintain it until the bottom falls out and rely on the wisdom that President Ford offered when he took office at the end of an earlier monumental crisis.

He told us: “Our Constitution works.”

national news

Liz Cheney: doomed!

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

As I watch the once-great Republican Party devolve into a collection of cultists, I am left to lament the pending political demise of a GOP politician who has the temerity to stand for the rule of law.

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is facing a certain primary challenge next year. She now appears likely to lose that contest to a challenger who has swilled the Kool-Aid dispensed by the former Insurrectionist in Chief.

This pending turn of events saddens me terribly.

It’s not necessarily that Rep. Cheney stands tall in my gallery of political heroes. I am not a fan of her conservative politics. I am a fan of her stand against the former POTUS’s actions on 1/6 when he incited the riot of terrorists who stormed the Capitol Building and sought to stop the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The House of Representatives impeached the ex-POTUS a second time for that act. Cheney joined a handful of Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him. She has stood firm on the oath she took to defend the Constitution. Cheney said the party is not beholden to any individual.

For that she is going to face a stern primary challenge in Wyoming. I fear she is going to lose. She might lose bigly.

The country would be worse off if she is replaced by another cultist.

national news

This pol takes the cake

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There had been a neck-and-neck battle throughout several states to determine which of them had the nation’s weirdest individual serving as governor.

Then a clear “favorite” emerged just the other day. The “winner” appears to be Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida.

I want you to roll this one around for a moment. DeSantis issued a “no mandate” order, meaning that there would be no orders coming from local governments to have folks don masks to fight the COVID outbreak in Florida.

Ahh, but some school superintendents defied that order. They ordered teachers, students and staff to wear masks. De Santis’s response? It was to threaten to withhold the pay for public school educators who chose to defy the governor’s no-mandate edict.

Now I have to ask you: Is that just about the most outrageous thing you’ve heard come from a governor?

The irony, of course, is unbelievable. Florida — along with Texas — is the state with the most outbreaks of the Delta variant of COVID-19. It is logging the nation’s greatest infection rate, hospitalization rate and, oh yeah, death rate.

DeSantis, though, won’t budge from his order banning any additional health restrictions designed to, um, keep people alive. The Sunshine State nitwit says the COVID surge is coming from immigrants crossing the border from Mexico, a clear effort to pin something — anything! — on President Biden. I should mention that DeSantis is a possible 2024 GOP presidential candidate.

To be sure, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, another Republican, has been giving DeSantis a run for the distinction of nation’s top gubernatorial weirdo. Abbott has issued a no-mandate order of his own, only to be challenged by some of the mega school districts in Texas; they were led by Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, who has emerged as my latest hero in this political battle.

Institutions of higher learning in Texas are invoking mandatory COVID testing programs for their students, faculty and staff. That’s a start, although it’s not as in-your-face as the mask mandate that came from the DISD and other big-city public school systems.

I cannot figure this clown DeSantis out. He wants to run for president in 2024, or so we are being led to believe. He’ll be among a large field of Republicans seeking to run for the nation’s highest office.

I am wondering if he is going to use the withhold educator salaries gambit as a campaign ploy. If he does, he is toast. Please, governor … try to justify that bizarre and cruel policy.

I double-dog dare ya.

national news

Biden is still POTUS! Well …

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(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The sun rose in the east this morning. I rolled out of the rack and got my day started per usual.

I glanced at the news and discovered that Joseph R. Biden Jr. is still president of the United States.

Who knew?

Well, it turns out that the My Pillow dude’s prediction that the 45th POTUS would be “reinstated” by day’s end on Friday the 13th didn’t come to pass. Indeed, the Internet has been full of jokes about the “re-inaugural parade” down Pennsylvania Avenue that didn’t take place. Friends and acquaintances have been asking, “Did I miss it?”

I would laugh all this off, blow it off as a sick joke (which it most certainly is) and not give it a second thought, except that too many lunatics among us actually bought into the crap pitched by My Pillow Guy, and the likes of POTUS 45 legal pal Sydney Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — who’s been disallowed from practicing law in the city he once governed.

Of course, we also have the former Seditionist in Chief continuing to pitch The Big Lie about alleged electoral theft in the 2020 presidential election. Rather than accepting the notion that he was just a temporary occupant of the White House before losing the election, we are hearing about how the ex-Liar in Chief chose to employ astonishing methods to get government officials to overturn the results of the election.

But … he ain’t POTUS; he won’t ever hold the office again. Joe Biden remains on the job.

For that I am so very grateful.

national news

Inauguration 2.0? Hah!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Today is supposed to be a landmark day in the history of U.S. politics, if you buy into the nuttiness of My Pillow Guy … whose name I will refrain from using in this blog.

The wacko says today is the day POTUS 45 returns to the White House, settles in behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and resumes his role as Liar/Imbecile/Numbskull/Nitwit/Know-Nothing in Chief.

Do you believe that will happen? Neither do I.

The troublesome aspect of this is that My Pillow Guy has been very specific in predicting this would occur. On this day. Why this day? It might be that it’s Friday the 13th, which in the world of My Pillow Guy might symbolize some sort of poetic justice.

POTUS 45 is not going anywhere near the White House. Likely not ever for as long as he inhabits this good Earth. Where he goes after that, well … no one can control that.

I remain concerned about the level of stupidity and gullibility that remains out there among the voting American public over these claims of “widespread election fraud.”

Read my lips: It did not happen.

President Joe Biden was elected to the nation’s highest office. He is on the job doing what he needs to do to “restore out national soul.”

As for POTUS 45, he and My Pillow Guy are pi**ing into the wind if he harbors any idiotic notion of returning to power.

national news

Biden faces stubborn foe in stupidity

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has fought innumerable political battles over his lengthy public service career.

I daresay none of them holds a candle to the stupidity he is facing now that he has attained the nation’s highest political office. It is a remarkably stubborn foe that Biden must defeat.

The problem he faces, though, is determining how he can speak past  the terminally stupid among those who continue to insist that he didn’t actually win the 2020 presidential election.

Of course he did. He won it bigly. President Biden garnered 7 million more ballots than the other guy. His Electoral College victory, while not a landslide, mirrored the total that the other guy won when he captured the presidency in 2016.

And yet, the president seeks to persuade all of America that he has a plan to jumpstart the economy, restore our role as the world’s leading nation, that we need to battle the existential threat posed by climate change and, oh yeah, rid us of the pandemic that at the moment is raging anew.

Only a little more than half the country is ready to buy in. The rest of us, that significant minority of Americans? Many of them are wallowing in the stupidity uttered by their hero, the defeated — and twice-impeached — former POTUS.

Actually, the impediment to President Biden’s effort to rebuild trust in our government involves more than just stupidity. It includes a dangerous dose of evil intent among those who keep fomenting The Big Lie about the 2020 election. Stupidity and treasonous tendencies comprise a dangerous combination.

So it is against those headwinds that Joe Biden is struggling to repair the wreckage brought by his immediate predecessor. All those fights during his 36 years in the U.S. Senate and his eight years as vice president during the Barack Obama administration seem today to be almost quaint.

Stupidity is proving to be the most stubborn foe of all.

national news

Fauci is not our ‘enemy’

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Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One American’s “enemy” is another American’s hero.

With that said, I want to share a brief item that showed up today on my social media news feed. It comes from U.S. Rep. Val Demings, a Florida Democrat who is running for a seat in the Senate occupied by Marco Rubio.

Demings said: Marjorie Taylor Greene called Dr. Fauci an “enemy to our nation” and members of the GOP like Marco Rubio have called for Dr. Fauci to be fired – so I’ve created a petition to stand up for Dr. Fauci and other scientists … 

Who is Marjorie Taylor Greene? She is the Georgia congresswoman who spouts stupid and insanely frightening rhetoric endorsed by the QAnon crowd about the pandemic, the vaccines developed to rid us of the virus and assorted other nonsense.

Greene, a Republican (of course!) is the true “enemy to our nation.” Dr. Anthony Fauci has become the go-to guy on the pandemic and how we need to ensure we do not become infected.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is entitled to spout her trash. I am entitled — indeed, obligated, in my view — to ignore it. Oh, and I also am entitled to speak out against such hideous idiocy.

national news

‘Distractions’ can be political killers

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Americans today received another textbook lesson on how scandalous “distractions” interfere with politicians who sign on to govern and to care for the public’s business.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned his office today effective in two weeks. He has been accused by 11 women of sexual harassment. Cuomo denies doing what they accuse him of doing but gave one of those “if I offended anyone” apologies that, to my ears, sends me into orbit.

Yes, he and what’s left of his staff have been distracted by the scandal. Cuomo no longer can govern. Every decision, every move he makes, every statement he utters would be cast against the allegations that many of us find credible.

President Lyndon Johnson cited the distraction of the Vietnam War protests at home before telling the world on March 31, 1968 that “I will not seek and will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

President Richard Nixon, whose administration was being swallowed whole by Watergate, never admitted to doing anything wrong when he tendered his resignation on Aug. 8, 1974. He, too, cited the “distraction” created by all the furor over what he did — which was to abuse the power of his office to cover up the burglary at the Democratic National Committee office in June 1972.

Distractions have this way of getting in front of governing officials.

Too bad, you know? That’s how it goes and that is how it went today as Andrew Cuomo became the latest pol — but surely not the last — to resign because he didn’t want to take a moment of attention away from the duties of his office.

This is what happens when politicians misbehave. I happen to believe the accusers who said Cuomo harassed them sexually. I also happen to believe that the governor is right about the reason for his resignation, that he didn’t want to be distracted by the furor and the fury his actions have generated.

I am left to ask: Is it too much to ask that we elect politicians who know better than to behave in a way that creates these “distractions”?

national news

B’bye, Gov. Cuomo

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Wow!

I could just leave it at that, but I’ll offer a few words about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation that takes effect in two weeks.

He has been accused — credibly in the eyes of almost everyone — of sexually harassing 11 women. Cuomo today denied doing what New York Attorney General Letitia James — a fellow Democrat — concluded he did. He accused her of bias.

Ah, but he did apologize. If you want to call it that.

The reason he quit today was because of the “distraction” all of this would create. Cuomo said governing would come to a halt. He would not allow that to happen.

His resignation had to occur. Why? Because he had no support in the New York State Assembly. Democratic pols throughout the land — including President Biden — said he should quit. Cuomo had squandered the ability to govern because of some “lifelong” habit of touching people and calling them “honey,” “sweetheart” and “darling.”

Good grief.

What he did not say during his resignation speech was something that President Nixon didn’t say in 1974 when he announced his resignation. He didn’t have the support of those within his own party. Nixon got an earful from GOP Sens. Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott and Bob Dole that were he to be impeached by the House for the Watergate scandal that he would be convicted in a Senate trial.

Cuomo faced impeachment in the New York Assembly. He would have been convicted.

He is two weeks away now from exiting the stage.

Fine. Now the state that Andrew Cuomo says he loves can get on with governing.