Category Archives: national news

national news

What about this loon’s supporters?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

While the nation debates and wrings its hands over the rise of nut-job politicians in Congress, it is good to remember something critical: They all won elections by getting more votes than their opponents.

Which means that they obtained majorities among those who cast ballots. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is the nut job du jour who has been getting the bulk of the media’s attention of late. And I do believe she is nuts.

The question we need to ponder is this: How do candidates who believe what this QAnon disciple says out loud gain the support of most voters in their political jurisdiction?

Greene represents the 14th Congressional District of Georgia, covering part of the northwestern part of the state. It went strongly for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. President Biden won the state’s overall vote, but not in the district that Greene won.

In 2020, she defeated John Cowan in the GOP runoff. Then she ran against Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal, who pulled out of the race in September 2020, meaning that Greene ran unopposed. So, she won with 75 percent of the vote.

As frightening as she is — contending that notorious school massacres were hoaxes and that Muslims are unfit for public office — what’s even scarier is that she pulled most of the voters in her district along with her.

It makes me ask: Are most of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District voters as crazy as their member of Congress?

If not Rep. Greene, then who is waiting in the tall grass to ascend to power in that part of the country?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a serious crisis on our hands if our fellow citizens continue to elect certifiable nut jobs such as Marjorie Taylor Greene to our federal legislative branch of government.

national news

Unify Congress? Hah! Good luck

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s stated intention to “unify” the nation is facing a major hurdle very close to the president’s new home.

Just down the street from the White house sits Congress. Its members are at each others’ throats. Democrats are angry and some are frightened of their Republican colleagues. Why? Because many of them have given tacit approval of the insurrection that could have produced casualties among members of Congress.

Meanwhile, GOP members are continuing their harangue against the election that President Biden won over Donald Trump.

Some members of Congress don’t want to work with their colleagues. Many of them want their offices relocated because of actual fear of how their colleagues might treat them.

Yes, there is a serious rift opening wide among members of Congress. As Politico has reported: Some House lawmakers are privately refusing to work with each other. Others are afraid to be in the same room. Two members almost got into a fist fight on the floor. And the speaker of the House is warning that “the enemy is within.”

Forget Joe Biden’s calls for unity. Members of Congress couldn’t be further divided.

‘I’m just furious’: Relations in Congress crack after attack – POLITICO

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared that the “enemy is within” the halls of Congress. She is specifically pointedly of some House members who adhere to the QAnon lunacy that school shootings are hoaxes and that Muslims cannot serve in public office. Pressure is building to a full boil among Democrats to expel Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia, who said during the 2020 campaign that it is time to “shed blood” to reverse trends she opposes.

I want Joe Biden to succeed in unifying the country. I do not have an idea on how he should do so, other than for him to call on senior Republicans in the House and Senate — men and women he knows well — to persuade them to close the yawning divide between the parties.

It’s just that the president has to start seeking unity in the other co-equal government branch.

national news

QAnon poses dire threat

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Where in the world did QAnon come from and how in the world does it command the kind of attention it is getting these days?

It came from the deep recesses of human beings’ spirit and I suppose its attention is driven by the preponderance of social media in modern society.

I am happy to report that I do not believe anyone close to me adheres to the idiocy that the conspiracy theorists who populate this uber-fringe movement. If anyone surfaces I will be triple-damn sure to educate them quickly about the folly of what they espouse.

However, they are in Congress. They occupy seats in state legislatures; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of QAnon goofballs sitting in the Texas Legislature at this moment discussing and enacting measures aimed at governing how my family and I live.

QAnon comprises morons who subscribe to the nuttiest notions possible. They want to execute those with whom they disagree; they say Muslims are unfit to hold public office; they believe the government is coming after every gun in America; they have sought to debunk tragic events, such as school and church shootings, calling them hoaxes and made-up events; they deny that the Holocaust occurred; oh, and they blather this nonsense in the name of Christianity and patriotism.

Is there anything more un-Christian and unpatriotic than to hear someone say we should kill elected leaders?

QAnon supporters were among the terrorists who stormed Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January. They wielded flagpoles as weapons they used against police officers. They were heard yelling “Hang Mike Pence!” which was a direct threat to the life of the sitting vice president of the United States.

They need to be rooted out, exposed and booted from their elected office one way or another. Governing bodies — such as Congress or legislatures — can expel them. Voters need to be persuaded of the utter madness associated with sending them to office in the first place … and then they must act to rectify the grievous error they committed.

I had hoped we had eliminated the fright associated with Donald Trump serving as president when he left the White House for the final time. Silly me. We have a good bit more work to do to restore our national soul.

national news

No more POTUS spin in briefing room

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden made a hefty number of promises while campaigning for the office he won.

One of them involved his commitment to listening to the “science” as it regards the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

So … with that he said he wouldn’t step to the White House briefing room podium and try to speak on issues about which he knows nothing. The pandemic virus continues to rage across the nation. Joe Biden isn’t being seen at the briefing room rostrum talking about the virus, thinking out loud about possible “cures,” such as whether one could inject or ingest cleaning fluid that would wipe out the virus just like that.

Yes, until Jan. 20, we had a president who did that. He is now gone from office. President Biden is letting the scientists and the medical doctors speak on the details of the fight that continues.

I know we shouldn’t relish what should be taken as normal behavior by a president. It is difficult to resist commenting on it given the incessant pattern of lies and misstatements that came from President Biden’s immediate predecessor.

Indeed, it wasn’t as if I could take anything that Donald Trump ever told me seriously. I grew early in his term to disbelieve every single statement that he sputtered out.

The new president isn’t likely to create that credibility misery by saying things out loud that he has no business saying. President Biden will let the scientists speak about matters they studied. They are the folks with knowledge to pass on what they know to be true.

national news

QAnon infects our politics

Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Time for another fusillade against a QAnon-believing member of Congress.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene has become — with justification — the embodiment of what is wrong with many elements of the modern Republican Party.

Taylor-Greene is on record saying some of the most outrageous statements imaginable. Such as this piece of dookey: that the massacre of first- and second-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School and high schoolers at Marjorie Stoneman High School were made up, that they didn’t happen.

So, what does the House GOP leadership do? It places her sorry a** on the House Education Committee.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has yet to condemn the frothing rambling of this moron. He has given her a forum to further her idiocy on a committee that helps set federal public education policy that affects the very children threatened by the violence that the Georgia Republican lawmaker helped incite on the Sixth of January.

Taylor-Greene is about as un-American, un-democratic, unpatriotic an individual as I ever have witnessed, albeit from a safe distance far away from Capitol Hill and from this idiot’s Georgia congressional district.

Taylor-Greene, though, is far from the only danger to the democracy now serving in the U.S. House. Mo Brooks is another Republican, from Alabama, who stood among the terrorists who stormed Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January. He wasn’t seen smashing windows or beating security officers with flagpoles or hurling fire extinguishers at Capitol Police officers. He did, though, incite violence by cheering the garbage spewed by Donald J. Trump.

I am among those American patriots who is ready to welcome a new day on Capitol Hill. That day already has dawned in the White House, with the expulsion of Donald Trump and the election of Joe Biden. Congress, though, is still infected with morons/imbeciles/nut jobs who have the power to enact laws that affect the rest of us.

I am not proposing to censor or stamp out opinions with which I disagree. I do condemn in the strongest language I can muster the astonishing notions that pour forth from individuals who espouse certifiably insane notions.

Marjorie Taylor-Greene is one of them.

There. I am done with this numbskull. For now!

national news

No end yet to angry rhetoric

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It was too much to expect a quick fix, an early and immediate end to the angry rhetoric that accompanied the tenure of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Perhaps it was naive to expect such a miraculous occurrence.

Still, with President Biden’s aggressive approach to dealing with the myriad crises confronting the nation, I had a smidgen of hope that there might be some relief from the white-hot expressions coming from those on the right, the far right and from the political loony bin.

One week into the Biden presidency, I continue to wait for the relief. I fear it’s going to take a long while.

We keep hearing from the QAnon nut jobs who were elected to Congress. The Trumpkin Corps keeps yammering about how their voices will not be stilled, that by golly, more than 74 million of them cast their ballots for The Donald. They ignore the obvious, which is that President Biden collected 81 million-plus votes. And … he rolled up 306 Electoral College votes, the same number Trump pulled in four years earlier; remember, too, that Trump called his victory in 2016 over Hillary Clinton a “landslide,” which of course it was nothing of the sort.

My sincere eternal hope is that we can restore much more civility to our discourse than we have seen and heard during the Trump Era. Donald Trump is vanquished from the White House. His minions in Congress remain in office. They continue to whoop and holler about vote fraud. They bitch about Joe Biden’s aggressive use of executive orders. They gripe about his big and bold ideas to salvage our economy. The lunatics among them keep using social media to harp on conspiracy theories resulting from all the lies that Trump fed them.

The tone will improve. That’s my hope. I await the day I when can call it my expectation.

national news

GOP continues to cower

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Listen up, America.

Have we just witnessed a precursor to the verdict we can expect from the U.S. Senate that is putting Donald Trump on trial after his second impeachment by the House of Representatives?

I am afraid so. The Senate voted today to narrowly defeat a GOP measure to dismiss the trial on grounds that it isn’t constitutional. Five Senate Republicans joined Democrats in moving ahead. The vote was 55-45. The GOP senators with guts are: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Pat Toomey and Ben Sasse.

The rest of ’em? All cowards. They are cowering under threat of reprisal by the Trump cultists in their home state who will go after them at the next election.

They contend that the Constitution calls for impeachment to remove a president. Donald Trump already is gone, they say, so the trial is irrelevant and is unconstitutional.

Oh, my. Forty-five out of 50 Senate Republicans want to give a pass to a president who fomented a riotous mob into violence on the Sixth of January. What in the world is wrong with these idiots, er … individuals?

The terrorists captured the very floor of the Senate, where our lawmakers do their jobs. They threatened to kill then-Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, only God knows who else might have been killed or wounded in action had the rioters had gotten their hands on them.

None of that is sufficient to persuade most GOP senators to proceed with a trial that should occur, if only at this point to keep Donald Trump out of the political scene … for the rest of his miserable life.

Stay tuned, folks. It looks to me as though a Senate trial conviction is slipping away.

national news

Follow the evidence, senators

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s defense in his second impeachment trial is beginning to take shape.

It will not center on the high crime for which the House of Representatives impeached him. What he did was visible on TV screens around the world: He incited the terrorists to storm Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January and seek to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election that determine Joe Biden the winner.

Instead, the former president’s defense will hinge on some constitutional language that suggests that the House acted beyond the scope of its power by impeaching a man who no longer would be serving in the office of president.

Except for this little item: Trump was president when the House impeached him on Jan. 13. He left the office a week after that. The Senate is trying him now to prevent him from seeking public office ever again.

As I ponder this event, which begins on Feb. 9, I am left to wonder whether a second acquittal for Donald Trump will be on a technicality. You know, the kind of verdict that hardline prosecutors detest when they lose cases in which they present incontrovertible evidence, only to see it swept aside because of some technical matter.

You can bet your final dollar that the House managers who present their case will rely solely on the evidence that everyone saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. Think as well about the fact that senators will be hearing this evidence in the very scene of the crime that the rioters committed … at Donald Trump’s behest.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the single count leveled against Trump to the Senate. The House managers have a steep hill to climb if they hope to persuade 17 GOP senators to do the right thing and vote to convict Trump.

However, as we have seen with all too much maddening regularity, congressional Republicans too often exhibit cowardice when faced with political repercussions. Donald Trump is now a cult leader in exile … but the cultists who follow him remain committed to him far more than to the country they profess to love.

national news

Trump wants to form new party? Perfect!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This bit of news almost made me laugh out loud, as in guffaw uproariously.

Donald Trump, having disgraced the respectable elements of the Republican Party, might decide to form his own political organization if he wants to run for president in 2024.

A good bit of that remains in the hands of the U.S. Senate, which could bar him from running for office ever again if it finds the backbone it needs to convict him of incitement of insurrection. The House of Reps impeached Trump for the second time after he egged on the terrorists, encouraging them to storm Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January.

It is my fondest hope that Trump has deep-fried his political goose within the GOP no matter what the Senate decides. From my vantage in Trump Country, a Senate conviction remains a tall order. The U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict a president; that means the Senate needs to contain 17 GOP members with courage and a deep and abiding love of the government they took an oath to protect.

Is there a self-respecting non-Trump cultist Republican who believes the ex-president is suited to lead a once-great political party? Hell no, man!

So, sure thing, Mr. Trump. Form your political party. All he has to do is put a name on what exists already. Call it the Trump Party. It’s in keeping with Trump’s love affair with his own name. He plasters it on casinos, airplanes, hotels, a university, steak sauce. His party exists in reality as it is, breaking away from traditional Republicanism to create what he calls a “movement” aimed at “making America great again.”

Hey, there’s another name for it. The MAGA Party! It could be linked forever with Donald Trump, the guy who brought us death and misery by failing to act against a killer virus and whose astonishing ineptitude resulted in a collapsed economy.

If I were a Democratic Party activist, I would be exhorting Trump to go ahead and make my day.

media news, national news

No angry tweets … sweet!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to stand with David Plouffe, one of America’s most brilliant political strategists.

He wrote this message on Twitter: Will take a while to get used to waking up on a weekend and not be bombarded with a dozens of mean, crazy and destructive tweets from the world’s most powerful person. But I like the feeling so far.

I like the feeling, too. I like not having my Twitter feed flooded with posts from an angry president of the United States. I like reading about how senior presidential administration officials are learning they are being fired, or are learning about critical policy decisions, or are having to fend off criticism from the commander in chief.

The silence is golden.