Category Archives: national news

DC riot, national news

Pence shows his wussiness

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I just have to say it out loud and as directly as I can.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is a wuss.

Whatever in the world keeps him from defending himself against scurrilous attacks from the imbecile with whom he was elected to lead this nation is utterly beyond me.

Pence is beginning to return to public life. He and Donald Trump lost their bid for re-election in November 2020. It is widely believed Pence wants to run for president in 2024. It also is thought that Trump might harbor the same ambition. These two men, therefore, could become Republican Party primary opponents.

As he reemerges onto the public stage, Pence sticks to the same strategy he used by Trump’s side: Total fealty (msn.com)

Will that bring any sort of criticism from Pence toward Trump. Not based on what he said this week. What is astounding to me is that Trump trashed Pence on Jan. 6 — the day of the insurrection — for failing to show “courage” because Pence wouldn’t seek to overturn the election results.

The Trumpkin Corps of fanatics followed Trump’s assertions. Many of them stormed the Capitol Building chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” while some of them defecated on the floor of the nation’s government. 

Someone will have to explain to me how a Pence-Trump rivalry — should it develop in the GOP primary for the White House in ’24 — is going to play out if the former VP continues to slobber all over the shoes of the former idiot in chief.

I don’t understand a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m a dunderhead. I simply am baffled beyond belief at the slavish fealty that Mike Pence shows toward the guy who doesn’t return a shred of loyalty to his most loyal suck-up.

national news

Biden activates ‘The Club’

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has done something during his first 100 days in office that pleases me greatly, even though I admit it is merely a matter of symbolic outreach.

Biden has reactivated The Presidents Club, the group of men who understand the trials and turmoil associated with the nation’s highest office. He has called on them prior to making key decisions. He has sought their counsel.

Oh, I should mention that one of the members — Donald Trump — is still left out. He will remain an outcast likely for as long as he lives.

You see, Trump tossed aside the symbolism associated with The Presidents Club. He ended up insulting every one of his living predecessors before he left office in January.

President Biden isn’t wired that way. He called President Bush when he announced his decision to end our troop involvement in Afghanistan. He notified President Obama of the same decision. Biden this week paid a visit to President and Mrs. Carter in Atlanta when he visited Georgia to make a pitch for his latest economic stimulus package.

The Presidents’ Club returns with Biden restoring consultations that Trump dismissed – CNNPolitics

Given that Donald Trump is still trying to overturn the 2020 election results and continues to undermine his successor, do not look for Biden to reach out to Trump at any time on any issue that confronts him.

Yes, none of this matters in terms of policy. It does illustrate the value of the wisdom that former presidents bring to the current occupant of the White House.

It also illustrates how President Biden is wired and how he intends to demonstrate his understanding that he might not possess all the answers to all the problems he will face.

national news

Biden sends wall money back to Pentagon

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump got his biggest applause while campaigning for election and re-election that he would make Mexico pay for The Wall he would build along our southern border.

Mexico hasn’t paid a nickel for it, nor will it pay. What did Trump do then? He redirected money meant for the Pentagon toward construction of The Wall.

Trump didn’t win re-election. So now the man who replaced him, President Biden, has sent $14 billion in Wall money back to the agency from where it came.

Biden administration to return Trump’s border wall money to Pentagon accounts (msn.com)

Good call, Mr. President/Mr. Commander in Chief.

The money should have stayed at the Pentagon, where Congress appropriated it in the first place. Trump’s decision to divert Pentagon money to construction of The Wall was an act of political desperation, given that there would be no on Earth that Mexico would — or should — pay for a structure that is being erected by our government.

As Roll Call reported: “To build a wall along the southern border, the previous Administration redirected billions of dollars Congress provided for supporting American troops and their families, and for purchasing military vehicles, aircraft, and ships,” the official said in a statement. “The Biden Administration is committed to upholding the rule of law, and properly equipping American troops and caring for their families.”

Congress’s authority to appropriate money must remain intact. It does now that Joe Biden has taken charge of the executive branch of government.

national news

Trump just won’t vanish

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(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s time for me to make an admission.

Try as I have done since Jan. 20 — when Joe Biden took the presidential oath — to rid this blog of anything relating to Donald J. Trump … I just cannot cross that threshold.

I mean, good grief, the ex-president keeps inserting himself into the news. He continues to endorse political candidates; he keeps fomenting the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election; he continues to rile up his base with statements that hint at a possible presidential run in 2024.

Meanwhile, the guy who beat him like a drum in 2020 — President Biden — continues to make policy pronouncements, keeps seeking to work with congressional Republicans despite their claims to the contrary and keeps acting the way presidents are supposed to act.

I am happy to report that these blog posts have dealt with far more than Donald Trump. I just am hoping to eliminate the need to comment on him altogether. When might that occur?

Hmm. Let’s see. Maybe if he gets sentenced to prison for, oh, campaign finance violations or for coercing/bullying state officials to overturn election results. He might disappear if he goes to prison for income tax violations. Or he could vanish if we learn that he isn’t nearly as rich as he kept saying he was when he ran for president in 2016.

I will take a tiny measure of comfort in realizing that the media keep commenting on him, too. He does make “news,” even if the news he makes lacks the impact it had during the four years he defiled the White House as POTUS. The comfort I take in that realization really doesn’t make me feel any better, other than I realize I have company among those of us who comprise what they call the “pundit class.”

One more point: We have Rudy Giuliani — the ex-POTUS’s personal lawyer — who also might face a world of legal hurt. What might happen if prosecutors indict the former NYC mayor and one-time 9/11 hero? He could turn on his client in order to save his own hide.

Yep, that’ll keep Donald Trump in the news, too. It likely will provide this blog with more ammo.

Dang it! I want him to go away. Really. I do!

national news

Biden honors Carter

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden ventured today to Georgia to do two things.

He sought to tout the accomplishments of his first 100 days in office. Biden also paid a visit to one of his first political heroes, Jimmy Carter, the nation’s 39th president.

President and Mrs. Biden visited former President and Mrs. Carter at their home in Plains, Ga.

He said something, though, that I want to echo. “He showed us throughout his entire life what it means to be a public servant,” Biden said of Carter.

President Carter is 96 years of age now. His health keeps him home most of the time. He and his wife of 70-plus years, Rosalynn, have dedicated their lives to advancing the work of the Carter Center in Atlanta and, of course, in the former president’s efforts to build homes for Americans in need for Habitat for Humanity.

Biden was a young U.S. senator in 1976 when he endorsed the former Georgia governor’s bid for the presidency. That endorsement forged a friendship that has lasted all these decades.

At so many levels, President Carter has shown us how to serve others. The former president doesn’t appear intent on forging his own historical niche, but his commitment to serving others is worthy of high honor.

Joe Biden, national news

Biden faces steep hill

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden wants to go big.

Republicans in Congress want to go … nowhere.

Who wins this argument? I’ll go with President Joe Biden every time I get the chance.

Biden spoke to the nation Wednesday night in tones that were alternately vociferous and reassuring. He whispered at times and all but shouted at other times during his hour-plus long speech to a joint session of Congress.

In a certain sense he was preaching to the proverbial choir when we tuned in to watch President Biden. I’ll declare flat out that I want him to succeed. I endorse the essence of his policy platform, which is that he wants to bring government back from the shadows and into the lives of those who need help.

I concede that President Biden is proposing an expensive set of plans to restore this nation’s role as the world leader. Biden and Congress already have agreed to spend $1.9 trillion in COVID relief funds to help Americans harmed in some manner by the pandemic. There is more spending on tap.

However, the intent of that spending is to help all Americans. Yet the president continues to run face-first into resistance from Republicans in Congress who keep insisting that the nation cannot afford to do damn near anything. Joe Biden is having none of that. He tells us that doing nothing is “not an option.”

Here, though, might be the greatest dichotomy between what GOP politicians are doing and what the public favors. Public opinion surveys tell us that American citizens — such as yours truly — favor what Biden wants to do. The GOP pols? They are on the wrong side of public opinion and quite probably on the wrong side of history as they continue to dig in against the president’s agenda.

Are those politicians smarter than the rest of us? Do they know something we don’t know or understand? Hell … no! They do not!

They work for us. Not the other way around!

I wish I could report that government works again now that we have a president who understands how to govern. Good government remains a team sport that requires the executive and legislative branches to put the country first.

One of them — the exec branch — has done so. We’re still waiting on legislators to do their job.

national news

America’s Mayor falls hard

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The shocking decline in stature of the man once known as America’s Mayor has my head spinning to this day.

Rudy Giuliani once stood tall as a hard-charging federal prosecutor in New York City, then as that city’s mayor, then as a Republican primary presidential candidate.

Time magazine named Giuliani as its Person of the Year in 2001 because of the stout leadership and compassion he exhibited as his city sought to recover from the 9/11 terror attacks.

What the hell happened to this fellow?

FBI agents raided his office and his residence this week looking for evidence in a long-standing investigation by the Southern District of New York into whether he violated lobbying laws while working on behalf of Ukraine. He has tied himself tightly to Donald J. Trump, becoming the ex-president’s personal lawyer and chief apologist.

Giuliani’s conduct during Trump’s two impeachment trials and all the period between them and throughout much of Trump’s term in office has been mind-boggling in the extreme.

Now he is being investigated by a Justice Department agency, which brings me to the most vivid irony of all. Giuliani earned his stripes while heading the Southern District of New York … which now is hot on a trail that many observers believe will lead to an indictment of the one-time America’s Mayor.

national news

Government no longer ‘the problem’?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Ronald W. Reagan stood on the Capitol steps on Jan. 20, 1981 and declared that “government is the problem.”

President Joseph R. Biden stood inside the House chamber on Wednesday night and said, well, something quite different, that government can repair what ails many Americans.

So it is that the “era of big government” is returning to the forefront of American life. I have slightly mixed feelings about that, although I do endorse much of what President Biden wants to bring to the lives of Americans ravaged by a global pandemic and the economic hardship that accompanied it.

I endorse Biden’s call for comprehensive immigration reform. I believe the government needs to make permanent the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program — which lends a hand to those who were brought here illegally as children by their parents.

The nation’s infrastructure as Biden has defined it needs government help. I endorse the president’s plan to tax the wealthiest Americans more to pay for much of his big agenda.

Free community college for every student? Hmm. Not sure about that one.

Climate change poses an existential threat to our national security and, yes, government has a role to play in stemming the impact of the change on our fragile planet.

Joe Biden’s speech Wednesday night wasn’t a stemwinder. It didn’t move Americans to jump into the fight fully. It was, however, far from the dark, forbidding speech that Donald J. Trump gave at his inaugural in 2017.

Although, I do want to say that Biden’s speech did contain at least one reference that might stand the test of time, which is that the Jan. 6 insurrection was the worst such act “since the Civil War.”

President Biden has laid out an aggressive government agenda. He said that inaction is not an option, that Congress must seize the moment and act on behalf of an entire generation.

Oh, I am certain that the Republicans who occupy a hefty minority in both congressional chambers will dig in on their opposition to anything that comes from the Democratic administration. It is their modus operandi.

I stand, though, as one American patriot who welcomes the return of our federal government as a last resort to helping Americans who continue to suffer from a killer virus.

national news

‘Old man in a hurry’?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Leave it to the Brits to put American politics in some form of perspective that we might not always recognize on this side of The Pond.

A BBC broadcast on NPR this morning was talking about President Biden’s aggressive agenda. He sought, and received, a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. Now he is going after a $2.2 trillion infrastructure reform package that he wants enacted by the Fourth of July. Biden also is pressing hard for gun control legislation that doesn’t plow under the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

The British analyst — whose name escapes me at the moment — then offered a tart description of the president, calling him an “old man in a hurry.”

Well, there you go.

Joe Biden is by far the oldest man ever elected president. He is 78 years of age. He turns 79 in November. Were he to run for re-election in 2024, he would do so at the tender age of 82.

Why does this matter? Let’s see. It matters because President Biden knows — as someone who has buried two of his children — how fragile this Earthly existence can be. His infant daughter died in a horrific car crash in 1972 along with the first Mrs. Biden; his two sons were grievously injured in that tragic event.

The older of his sons then contracted glioblastoma — an aggressive form of brain cancer — and died in 2015 at the age of 46.

Joe Biden campaigned for the presidency partly by reminding us of his humanity and how he appreciates the fragility of our life on this good Earth.

In that context I presume you can say that time is no human being’s friend. Father Time becomes even more menacing to those of us who have logged the amount of time that Joe Biden has racked up already.

Just as Bill Clinton told us in the 1990s that the “era of big government is over,” Joe Biden has taken an entirely different approach. Big government must serve the people who pay for it, or so it appears to be when President Biden discusses the big things he wants done.

The backdrop, though, is indisputable. Joseph Biden Jr. is an old man who I hope with all my heart remains in good health. However, old men such as Joe Biden cannot depend fully on anything in life.

Yes, the president appears to be in a hurry. I cannot blame him for wanting to get things done … as in right now!

national news

GOP needs to retool itself

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

After every presidential election cycle, the party that loses the contest — particularly if they lose it in a landslide — announces plans to engage in self-examination.

The Republican Party made that declaration after Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, seeking ways to expand its appeal to include more racial minorities. What happened then? Donald Trump became the party nominee in 2016 and he went on to win the White House.

Eek! Then he lost his re-election effort to President Joe Biden. Admittedly, it wasn’t by a landslide. Now, though, the party is having to face its own mortality, given the stranglehold that the Trump cult has placed around the GOP neck.

If ever a political party needed a retooling, it’s the Republican Party of 2021, which now contains two disparate elements: the establishment wing and the Trump wing.

I’ll be brutally honest on this point. I don’t really give a crap-ola which way the GOP tilts. I don’t find either wing of the party to be all that enticing. Of the two wings, I much prefer to deal directly with the establishmentarians among Republicans. The Trumpkins? No way in hell, man!

The GOP, though, faces a struggle the likes of which it hasn’t seen. It reminds me a bit of the internal struggle the Democratic Party went through after its 1972 crushing under President Nixon’s landslide victory. The party sought to remake its image. It produced a maverick nominee four years later, Jimmy Carter, who managed to win the White House. He served for a term then got his headed handed to him by another maverick, GOP nominee Ronald Reagan, who then remade the Republican Party into what it became before Trump hijacked it in 2016.

This much is clear to me: The Republican Party needs to cleanse itself of the toxic formula brewed by Trump and his acolytes if it is going to be taken seriously as a legitimate forced with which Democrats must reckon.