Category Archives: national news

International news, national news

It’s a ‘crisis’ for sure

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

For those who think I am a Joe Biden suck-up who just cannot criticize the new president, here’s flash for you …

I believe President Biden misread and underestimated the impact of his immigration policy on our southern border and is now paying the price for allowing a full-blown crisis to develop.

Were I able to offer face-to-face advice to the president prior to his taking office, I would have said that his kinder/gentler immigration policy is going to entice immigrants into this country — and that he had better be prepared to handle the influx of human beings seeking a better life than the one they are leaving behind.

He didn’t do that.

To be sure, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is trying to assure the nation that the Biden administration has this matter under control, and that DHS and others intend to treat immigrants humanely. I want to believe Mayorkas.

The Biden approach to immigration issues presents a polar opposite strategy from what occurred during the Donald Trump years. Trump sought to round up everyone who was here illegally and deport them poste-haste back to wherever they came from. He separated children from their parents in what has been vilified as an act of abject cruelty.

Joe Biden took office promising a softer approach than the one offered by Donald Trump. If I was living in a Latin American nation and wanted to escape poverty, crime and repression for a new life in the U.S., you’re damn right I would do what I could to get there. If I was sending that message out to the world, which is what President Biden did, then I certainly would have thought out a strategy to deal with an expected tide of new arrivals.

President Biden needs to get both arms wrapped tightly around this matter in a major hurry. I am going to trust in the president’s desire to do right by those who seek entry into the Land of the Free. I also am going to implore him to stop worrying about what to call what is happening along our border.

It’s more than a “challenge,” Mr. President. It’s a “crisis.”

Joe Biden, national news

Comforters in chief weigh in

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are getting a crash course in the unspecified role the leaders of our nation must play … and it is coming in a major hurry.

Eight people died in a mass shooting in Atlanta this week. Six of the victims were Asian-Americans; the massacre occurred in three Asian-owned businesses. Police arrested a suspect, who told the cops he wasn’t driven by race, but instead by some sort of “sex addiction.”

Biden and Harris ventured quickly to Atlanta to offer words of comfort and they vowed to pursue justice heavily and with full force.

We now have an attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has hands-on experience dealing with domestic terrorism, having led an investigation into the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

None of us should wish any more of these calls to duty for the POTUS and VPOTUS. However, should the calls come — and they most certainly will — I believe we can be assured that President Biden and Vice President Harris will be up to the task.

Joe Biden possesses a remarkable well-spring of empathy that comes from his own intensely personal loss — of his first wife and infant daughter and of his adult son. Kamala Harris is the first person of Asian descent to serve as VP, so she feels the pain being inflicted on other Asian-Americans by nimrods who blame them for a virus that just so happened to have been discovered in China.

They are the comforters in chief. I am heartened that the know how to perform the role that has been thrust upon them.

national news

Here comes the POTUS ‘meme’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Wait for it, everyone.

President Biden was running up the stairs to step aboard Air Force One when he stumbled a bit. Then he did it twice more.

Did the president fall on his face? Did he topple onto the steps? No. He didn’t. He got up. Walked the rest of the way. Stood for a moment at the door and snapped a salute to the military honor guard that awaited him. Then he walked into the massive jet and flew off to Atlanta, where he offered words of comfort and support to a community shaken by the massacre that killed eight people.

What, then, awaits us? It’ll be the endless string of social media memes that poke fun at the president.

Hey, I am commenting on it with this blog post, which I suppose tells you that it kind of interests me, too.

I just don’t want to see President Biden lampooned the way, uh, President Ford was many decades ago because he took a nasty fall while descending the steps of Air Force One.

It’s yet another sign of the times. Mr. President, get used to it.

national news

Where is condemnation from No. 45?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You don’t need to answer the question posed in the headline atop this brief blog post.

It’s a rhetorical query, given that I don’t really expect Donald Trump to say a word about the shooting in suburban Atlanta, Ga., that left eight people dead, six of whom were Asian-Americans.

Our national debate over race relations and racism has turned toward the Asian-American community, which has been demonized and vilified partly because of the rhetoric that came from Trump as the COVID virus began to spread across the nation and around the world. It began in China, and Trump — even today, after he has left office — continues to call it the “China virus.”

Chip Roy rebuked for lynching remark at hearing on Asian American discrimination | The Texas Tribune

If the ex-president had a shred of decency he would issue a statement of condemnation against the attacks against Asian-Americans and certainly against the massacre that occurred at three Asian-American owned businesses.

Is there a link between Trump’s angry rhetoric and the violence against Asian-Americans that appears to be occurring in communities across the land? It looks like it to me. Whether we ever hear from the ex-president of the United States remains as unlikely as ever.

What a shame.

national news

He won’t run again?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Under normal circumstances, I might not place too much stock in what a university professor predicts for our nation’s political future.

Then again, any prediction involving Donald John Trump ought to get our attention. It gets mine for sure.

Allan Lichtman has predicted the winner of every presidential election seemingly since The Flood. He now says that Trump won’t run for the Republican Party presidential nomination nor will he run as a third-party candidate in 2024. He also says President Biden likely will run for re-election next time despite the fact that he will be 82 years of age were he to take office for a second term.

Lichtman is an American University political historian. He said Trump would win in 2016 despite every pundits’ prediction that Hillary Clinton would win in a breeze. Then the bottom fell out of Trump’s term and Biden won handily, which Lichtman saw coming as well.

As for the ex-president’s future, Lichtman doesn’t see it bearing much political fruit. And as for Biden’s future, that remains to be seen as well, given all that can go wrong between now and, say, the end of the 2022 midterm election.

Still, I am going to cling to the hope that Professor Lichtman’s prognostication skills hold up and that Trump really and truly is gone forever from the nation’s political scene.

Trump well might be indicted for campaign finance fraud and for coercing Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn a statewide election that went to Joe Biden in 2020.

As the Miami Herald reports: Worse for Trump is that, “He’s got $400 million-plus in loans coming due. His brand is failing. His businesses are failing. He has a huge IRS audit. He doesn’t hold office anymore. He’s lost his Twitter feed,” Lichtman told me. That’s a lot of baggage for somebody to run for president, he added.

Professor who’s predicted presidential winners since ’80s says Trump won’t be a candidate in 2024. He’s probably right | Opinion (yahoo.com)

Here’s hoping Trump’s fortunes continue to crater.

national news

Oops! It’s a ‘crisis’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Jen Psaki didn’t mean to use the word “crisis” when describing what is occurring along our nation’s southern border.

The White House press secretary tried immediately to walk back that term, referring to it during her daily briefing as a “challenge.”

Well, actually it is a crisis. I don’t begrudge the White House press flack for calling it what it is. Those unaccompanied youngsters need our nation’s attention when they cross our border. Their numbers are at 20-year highs. I think I would call it a crisis.

Now, is it a crisis that cannot be repaired? Of course it can! It is possible for the Biden administration to get its arms around the problem. I want the immigration team to get busy crafting a solution.

White House press secretary slips up, calls border migrant surge a ‘crisis’ (msn.com)

I just chuckle and wince at the same time when government officials and their spokespeople get hung on using precise terminology.

I know what she said. I also know what is occurring. There shouldn’t be any need to grammar-check the White House press spokeswoman.

national news

Ol’ Ben was a wise man

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Benjamin Franklin well might be my favorite Founding Father.

He was an inventor, a diplomat, a writer, a statesman, a scientist and a man of impeccable vision. He was 70 years old and in poor health when he put his name on the Declaration of Independence.

But he knew the value of free speech and vigorous political discourse. A quote from ol’ Ben appeared this week in the Princeton (Texas) Herald that I want to share:

“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected in its ruins. Republics … derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.”

Franklin’s wisdom is worth sharing today because of the battering that free speech and expression has taken in recent years. We’ve just been through a horrendous political era in which the nation elected a man with no understanding of government and of the precepts that drive it. Donald Trump encouraged his followers to “beat the  hell” out of protesters at his rallies. He called the press the “enemy of the people.” He abhors criticism directed at him in any form and along the way developed a following of like-minded individuals who adhere to his strange and dangerous notion of a democratic society.

Benjamin Franklin had it exactly right when he wrote the words I have copied.

Franklin knew about the inherent strength that democracies get from “a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.” My goodness, the very First Amendment to our Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to “peaceably … assemble, and to petition government for a redress of grievances.”

We have heard plenty of talk about the “peaceable” part of protesting. It gets out of hand at times. Violence is not the answer and those of us who value what Benjamin Franklin believed abhor the violence that occasionally erupts when citizens get angry.

I am going to set the insurrection of Jan. 6 aside from this discussion. It was a singularly heinous act by a mob of terrorists who had no intention of seeking a peaceful solution to their grievances.

As we move forward from that horrifying event, let us not lose sight of the principle on which the founders — such as the great Benjamin Franklin — created this government. It is that we are allowed to protest what our government does in the performance of its duties.

The end result of Franklin’s wisdom is the realization that we are the bosses of those we select to represent us.

national news

DACA may be victim of surge

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This surge of underage migrants coming across our southern border might produce a casualty that many of us don’t want to see occur.

That casualty well could be a push toward comprehensive immigration reform.

Republicans are suing President Biden over what they contend is a failed immigration policy. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants the Biden team to do more to prevent this surge in undocumented, unaccompanied children coming into Texas. Everyone is focused on the crisis of the moment.

My fear is that the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals — aka DACA — is going to get caught up in the sausage grinder of recrimination. DACA is an act restored by President Biden that allows those who were brought here illegally as children by their parents to remain as U.S. residents. Biden wants to give them a faster track toward legal residency or citizenship.

DACA is part of a comprehensive immigration reform effort that was thought essential by President Bush, a Republican and by President Obama, a Democrat. Donald Trump wasn’t interested in reforming the immigration protocol, other than to deport all illegal immigrants immediately back to their country of origin.

That included DACA recipients, who were here because their parents brought them here when they were youngsters. They grew up in the United States, they have paid their taxes, many of them have excelled academically, professionally and have raised their families here.

DACA might be on the bubble as the nation struggles with this surge and as President Biden tries to find firm footing on which to move the administration forward.

I don’t want to see DACA disappear again.

national news

Asian-Americans under attack!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What the hell is happening to this country?

The latest victims of hatred now belong to a group of people of Asian descent. We are witnessing a hideous outgrowth of our national fight against a killer virus.

The coronavirus had its beginning in China, or so we have been told. It spread around the world. It entered the United States either in late 2019 or early 2020.

To worsen it, we heard our nation’s president refer continually to the disease as the “China virus,” or making mocking references to something he would call the “kung flu.”

Have we heard anything from the now former president urging Americans to stop the attacks on Asian-Americans? Has Donald Trump raised a single objection to what is happening throughout the nation he once led as its president? No! He has said nothing.

Individuals are being captured, jailed and prosecuted for hate crimes against Asian-Americans. And why? Because they are being vilified only because a virus took root in a foreign land.

President Biden has condemned the hate crime wave. However, the hate crime perps aren’t listening to the current president; they cling to the rhetoric from the man he defeated in 2020. The MAGA mob needs to hear this condemnation from Donald Trump. Tragically, Trump doesn’t appear wired to say what he must to those who are attacking elderly people, inflicting physical harm or bullying individuals over social media.

This terrible spike in hate crimes against Asian-Americans is no way to “make America great again.”

national news

Trump stain will last a good while

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump will be remembered ultimately as a failed president, one who damaged the institutions of our democracy and someone who came dangerously close to destroying the fabric of our republic.

He called himself a “consequential” president. He was all of that. And more.

Thus, his imprint will be difficult to erase from what he left behind.

I say all this because his rhetoric still resonates with so many Americans. Many millions of them voted to return him for a second term as president. Many millions more, though, voted to elect Joe Biden as president in 2020. I was among the latter category of voters, as if you didn’t know it already.

Trump’s followers continue to cast doubt on President Biden’s election, fueled by Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that he lost fair and square to someone who outsmarted and outcampaigned him.

The near-destruction of our government, of course, occurred on Jan. 6 with the insurrection provoked by Trump.

I cannot yet identify what will be the overarching legacy that historians will determine is Trump’s most, um, significant imprint.

It might be the riot on Jan. 6; it could be the terrible spike in race-related hate crimes that occurred on his watch; it might be the fraying of alliances around the world with nations that used to depend on the U.S.’s power and influence.

My personal “favorite” ought to be the mishandling of the pandemic that exploded on the world in late 2019. Trump lied about the misery that awaited us, despite knowing that the pandemic would do the damage it has done … and is still doing!

To be sure, Trump will tout the three justices he selected to the U.S. Supreme Court. I don’t begrudge the fact that Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett sit on the court. Elections do have consequences and the 2016 election installed a president who sought to shift the court dramatically to the right. It remains to be seen, though, just how far right the court will tilt over time.

Donald Trump is gone from the White House. My sense — and certainly my hope — is that he never darkens the door of my house ever again. He is not forgotten. Wiping away the stain left by a consequential presidency will take time.