Category Archives: national news

national news

GOP set to make hideous choice

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Has it really come down to this?

The Republican congressional caucus might be on the verge of purging its leadership of a true-blue conservative lawmaker with impeccable party credentials.

Why? Because she voted to impeach a president who incited a deadly riot on Jan. 6 and because she stands on certain principles that all patriotic Americans ought to follow: that no one is above the law.

Rep. Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and No. 3 in the GOP caucus leadership pecking order, might be voted out of her post because she believes that Donald Trump’s fomenting of the Big Lie about the 2020 election presents a danger to our democratic system of government.

And for that the GOP might send her to the back bench?

That is unbelievable, except that is what has become of a once-great political party.

The GOP has become a cult of personality beholden to someone who had no business being elected president of the United States in the first place. When he was elected in 2016, Donald Trump began the systematic dismantling of every political norm he could grab.

Along the way, he formed the astonishing cult of believers who adhere only to the whims and machinations of one man at the expense of good governance.

That individual has refused to this day to accept the fact that he lost an election and has taken the cult following to dangerous levels of blind fealty. It is a sight to behold.

I am not a fan of Rep. Cheney. Except for this notion: She is standing for a principle that I used to think transcended the partisan political divide. The principle is the rule of law.

Donald Trump incited an insurrection. The House of Reps impeached a second time for it. Cheney was one of 10 Republican House members to join their Democratic colleagues in holding Trump accountable for his incitement.

For that she is being punished? Because she stands for the belief that our Constitution and our democratic system of government — which she swore to protect — are more important than the political standing of one man?

Scary, man!

media news, national news

Fire him for keeps, Facebook

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have an idea on how Facebook should resolve this matter with Donald J. Trump and whether he should ever return to the social medium.

Facebook just needs to ban him for keeps. Permanently. Never again should he be allowed to spew the ranting lies that fly out of his mouth and off his fingertips.

There. How’s that?

Facebook’s board of oversight has ruled that the social media giant should keep him off the platform but admonished the company for failing to set a definite timetable for his return, or declare that he is banned for keeps.

I say ban the ex-POTUS forever!

Facebook took his account down after the Jan. 6 insurrection/riot/terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. You remember that, yes? It was a hideous display of inciting violence by the then-president who continues to this very hour to promote the Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him through rampant vote fraud. Well, it wasn’t stolen. Joe Biden was elected president freely, fairly and legally.

Here’s my version of the threshold question: Do you trust Donald Trump to stop promoting the Big Lie and to speak responsibly on Facebook? Here is my answer: I do not!

Donald Trump is arguably the most untrustworthy U.S. politician to come along since, oh, I don’t know if anyone else ever has approached this clown’s level of deceit, dissembling and duplicity. He cannot tell the truth. He is … a liar! 

Facebook has six months to decide whether to lift the ban or impose it permanently. Its oversight board said an “indefinite” ban wasn’t in keeping with Facebooks own criteria. It needs to get specific.

So, ban him for life!

media news, national news

No First Amendment problem

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A word to the right-wing wackos who are going bonkers over Facebook’s decision to keep Donald Trump off the social medium … for now: settle down and take a deep breath!

The Trump cultists in Congress are bitching about so-called First Amendment infringements because Facebook, a privately held media company, has decided it cannot allow someone to use its platform to call for an insurrection against the U.S. government.

That is what Trump did on Jan. 6. So it banned the former president. It decided to make a firm decision later on the extent of Trump’s banishment.

As for Trump’s First Amendment free speech guarantee, it is still there. Trump can yap, yammer and yeowl all he wants about the 2020 election being “stolen.” Of course that is just so much bullsh**. Trump knows it. I certainly do. So do you as well.

The First Amendment allows Trump to spew such nonsense. It doesn’t prohibit a private firm from exercising its own policy-making ability on who gets to speak out and who faces the muzzle.

So, right-wing blowards? You need to pipe down.

DC riot, national news

GOP leader has ‘had it’ with Cheney?

(Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I never thought the day would come that I would be standing behind a conservative Republican member of Congress.

But here I am, telling you that Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is getting the bum’s rush from her party leaders simply because she — and not them — chose to honor the U.S. Constitution they all swore an oath to protect and defend.

Disgusting, despicable, disgraceful.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California says he has “had it” with Rep. Cheney, which means she could lose her job as the House’s No. 3 GOP leader. Why is that? Because she voted to impeach Donald Trump after the president of the United States incited the insurrection mounted by the terrorists who stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6.

So, because she believes that Trump committed an act against the government by inciting the rioters to do what they did.

Is she less of a Republican politician because she chose to honor the Constitution? Of course not! Yet the GOP leadership now demands fealty to a cult leader above all else.

McCarthy has done the impossible. He has turned this center-left American patriot into a fan of a right-leaning member of Congress.

I am proud of Liz Cheney for standing up for the Constitution.

national news, political news

Trump has tight hold on GOP … but he won’t run in ’24

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It is time to try to dispel any notion that Donald J. Trump is going to run for president of the United States in 2024.

I just cannot in any way, shape or imagined form see how the former president makes a credible case for his nomination by the Republican Party to run for POTUS.

Why not? Let’s see.

He is facing possible criminal indictments in two jurisdictions: Manhattan, N.Y., and Fulton County, Ga. One of them involves possible campaign finance and tax fraud; the other involves possible coercion and bullying of an elected official.

Trump has a huge debt coming due, on the order of $400 million.

He continues to spew the Big Lie about alleged “theft” of the 2020 election.

Trump lost re-election in 2020 because voters across the board had gotten sickened by his incessant lying, his insults, his bullying, the chaos and confusion and his complete and unabashed incompetence when it came to governance.

How does a former president parlay any of that into something positive? How does he sell himself to an electorate that already has been exposed to this idiot’s self-aggrandizement.

Spare me the idiocy that he “controls” a huge portion of the GOP electorate. I will place my bet that the Trump “base” is going to shrink particularly if indictments are brought.

Oh, and then we’ll see what happens if former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani squeals on Trump if federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York hang a federal indictment on him.

Nope, the stars aren’t aligning well for Trump to make another run for the presidency. Which is more than just fine with me.

This guy just needs to get the hell out of our sight.

International news, national news

Russia is not our equal

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump was fond of telling us — perhaps he still is, for that matter — that it “would be nice if we got along with Russia.”

His strategy for making nice with Russia meant sucking up to its strongman, Vladimir Putin. It meant giving Russia a pass when it interfered in our election and denying our own intelligence analysis that said the Russians did interfere. It meant never challenging Russia over reports that it paid Taliban terrorists a bounty for killing Americans on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

Trump’s strategy didn’t work. Putin didn’t take the American president seriously. He played Trump like a fiddle.

President Joe Biden has taken over. He isn’t going to play nice with what is a third-rate military power and a fourth- or maybe fifth-rate economic power.

There can be no mistaking that Russia wanted Trump elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2020. It hacked into our electoral system and sought to undermine the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Why? Because it would get a better deal — from their standpoint — with Donald Trump.

President Biden has made it clear that he intends to hold Russia accountable for the mischief it is making around the world.

Biden is only 102 days into the presidency. He wasn’t granted the courtesy extended usually to new presidents from those they succeed. Donald Trump did not allow his national security team to consult openly and freely with the new POTUS’s team.

I only can presume that President Biden will deal with Russia from his lofty perch as commander in chief of the world’s greatest military and as head of state of the world’s most vibrant economy.

Yes, I get that Russia still has all those nuclear weapons left over from its Soviet Union era. I also know that the doctrine of mutual assured destruction if they chose to use them has kept the rival nations from going, um … “MAD.”

Making nice with Russia? It’s a non-starter. Period.

national news

Now the deficit matters?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Listening to Republican members of Congress bitch about the possibility of running up the federal budget deficit because a Democratic president wants to invest in our infrastructure makes me want to laugh, scream and cry … all at once!

Only now does the ostensible party of fiscal restraint choose to raise its voice against the cost of infrastructure overhaul. Puh-leeze.

President Biden is planning this week to meet with Republican congressional leaders to seek a compromise. Biden wants to spend $2.2 trillion on various projects including infrastructure; the GOP has come back with a $568 billion proposal that focuses more intently on roads, bridges, airports, ship channels … those kinds of things.

Yes, that’s a big gap. The GOP is yammering about deficit spending after approving a big tax break for rich Americans when Donald Trump was president. The tax cut helped run up the deficit and, of course, the national debt.

Where was the outrage then? Hmm. I heard them crickets, man.

I do hope President Biden can bring his immense negotiating skills to bear when he meets with his Republican friends. I also hope he can persuade them of the importance of employing government to work for the people who pay for it.

media news, national news

About that girl …

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Does the name Mary Ann Vecchio ring a bell with you? Does it strike a familiar note? Hmmm … ?

It didn’t hit me, either, until I opened up a story online from the Washington Post Magazine. I read about Mary Ann Vecchio, who as the author of the Post piece described her, was the most well-known mystery person on Earth.

You’ve seen the picture, yes?

That’s her, kneeling over a young Kent State University student who had just been shot by National Guard troops on the Ohio campus. The students were protesting the Vietnam War on May 4, 1970. I had thought all along that Vecchio was one of those student protesters. She wasn’t.

She was just 14 years of age when a photographer — Kent State senior John Filo — captured this image for the ages. She had run away from her home in Florida to escape her continually quarreling and fighting parents. She ended up in Ohio and, as her very bad luck would have it, she found herself in one of the landmark occurrences of the 20th century.

I didn’t know that Vecchio was just a girl. I had thought all along she was one of the Kent State students who got caught up in that protest and who saw her friend gunned down in the melee.

She also found her image captured for eternity by a student photographer whose picture would win him a Pulitzer Prize.

The girl in the Kent State photo and the lifelong burden of being a national symbol – The Washington Post

I have attached the Post magazine article to this blog item. Take some time to read it. You will be mesmerized by the woman who tells her life story, about her failed marriage and her journey through a tumultuous life that has returned her home from where she fled all those decades ago.

Wow!

national news

Trump keeps grip on GOP

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s vise grip on the Republican Party remains a gigantic mystery to me.

He is, in no particular order:

  • An inarticulate business mogul.
  • A liar.
  • A philanderer.
  • Someone who entered politics at its highest level with zero public service experience.
  • A guy who bragged about sexually assaulting women.
  • A conspiracy monger.
  • And, yes, a racist.

And yet this guy continues to retain this grip on a political party he hijacked in 2016. He demands complete loyalty and those who are loyal to only to him give it willingly.

For Republicans, fealty to Trump’s election falsehood becomes defining loyalty test (msn.com)

Thus, we are entering the netherworld between presidential election campaigns. Those who want to run for president must pledge their loyalty to Donald Trump or else be thrown to the wild dogs. How in the world do potential political opponents of Trump campaign against this guy … were he to declare his candidacy for the presidency again?

He bullies his GOP rivals by threatening to “primary” them in 2022. Trump already has drawn a bead on the likes of Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted to convict Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. Trump just cannot stand the thought of politicians adhering to the Constitution, of being more loyal to that document than to him.

How does he maintain that grip on the once-great party? How does he demand — and get — complete fealty from other egotists who also happen to serve in Congress?

It’s a mystery to me, man. So help me I cannot wrap my noggin around how this guy — of all guys — manages to perform this act of political bondage.

national news

Why defend myself?

3 Comments

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

We live in strange times these days.

The strangeness was brought to us in full bluster by none other than Donald J. Trump, who had the good luck (for him) of winning the presidency in 2016. He’s out of office now (which is so very good for the rest of us).

However, I find myself having to defend my support of President Biden, especially when I compare him to Trump. To be sure, there really is no way to compare a seasoned, lifetime politician — and I mean that in a positive way — to someone with zero political skill, which I believe is an essential quality one needs in a president.

I also want to make this point once again. Joe Biden was not my first choice to succeed Donald Trump. However, when he emerged from the huge field of Democratic primary contenders, then I was all in. We needed to get rid of Trump. Which we did in November 2020.

President Biden is far from the perfect pol but he’s a damn sight better than the imbecile he defeated. He has served in public life for half a century. Trump has served in public life for four years; the rest of his adulthood he spent enriching himself and trashing other human beings.

To that end, I am comfortable expressing my pro-Biden bias. I know it’s out there for all to see. I make no apologies for it.

As for Trump, the less I can say about him, the better it is for me. Not to mention for the rest of us, given that he will be off our radar.