Category Archives: national news

national news

Sens. Cruz, Hawley earn their scorn

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley try to defend their objection to certifying Joe Biden’s election as president by declaring they were doing the bidding of those who question the integrity of the election.

They did the bidding of the majority of Republicans who question it. Why did they disbelieve that President Biden won the election fairly? Because the guy Biden beat, Donald Trump, filled their numb skulls with the lie about the existence of “widespread voter fraud.”

Cruz and Hawley are two of the numbest skulls in the Senate. That is difficult for me to state because Cruz is a Harvard Law graduate, while Hawley got his law degree from Stanford. These men are not stupid. They are infected with the desire to become president someday. Cruz sought the highest office in 2016, but lost the Republican nomination to Donald Trump.

Hawley, from Missouri, got elected in 2018, but he’s already casting his gaze at the White House.

Will they resign, which some of their colleagues are demanding? Cruz is getting lots of media heat, with three major Texas newspapers calling for him to quit: the El Paso Times, the San Antonio Express-News and his hometown Houston Chronicle.

Sad to say, but I don’t expect either of them to pack it in. They will continue to rouse the rabbles in the Senate and will continue to obstruct President Biden’s agenda.

They both should quit. They have shamed themselves and the legislative body where they serve. Cruz and Hawley’s objection to Joe Biden’s election was based solely on a lie. They knew it was a lie when they yapped and yammered about voter fraud. That makes them unfit to represent their respective states and unfit to act on laws that affect all Americans.

national news

Waiting for normal political climate

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One of these days, maybe soon, Americans are going to get past the aftershocks of the political era that ended earlier this week.

Donald Trump has exited the White House. President Joe Biden has gotten right to work. But wait! We have another Senate trial awaiting us.

That, too, will become history. Senators can concentrate on other issues that affect the many millions of us who are weary of the pandemic, those who have been sickened by it, those who are mourning the loss of loved ones.

I am waiting with a certain degree of anxiousness for an end to the turmoil that continues to roil the waters.

It might take a long, long while for total normality to return. I am hoping we can experience that return even in increments. If we continue the journey back from the tempest that Donald Trump created almost daily, we will realize the progress we are making in real time.

I am acutely aware that there will be impediments to that recovery. It rests largely with the Trumpsters who continue to occupy public offices and those who bought into the Big Lie that Trump kept fomenting, the one about alleged voter thievery in the presidential election. We all witnessed the result of what that gullibility produced; the Capitol Hill insurrection was frightening in the extreme and to be candid, I haven’t gotten over it yet.

A new day will arrive. We will be cleansed eventually from the toxicity that Donald Trump brought us.

I am ready for a new day.

national news

Trial outcome runs into political reality

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(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I hate to deliver bad news, but I am going to deliver some right here.

It appears that the upcoming Senate trial of Donald J. Trump is not going to produce a richly deserved conviction of the former president. It has nothing to do with the evidence that he incited an insurrection. It has everything to do with what I expect to be a display of political cowardice among Senate Republicans who will face the mother of political revenge if they do the right thing.

The House impeached Trump on an allegation that he whipped the rioters into the frenzy that erupted when they stormed into the Capitol Building on the Sixth of January. I saw the president make those remarks. I saw the rioters’ response to it. Trump committed an act of incitement of insurrection.

The Constitution sets a high bar for the Senate to convict a president. It states that two-thirds of senators must agree. That means 17 GOP senators have to do the right thing.

Ten GOP House members joined their Democratic colleagues in impeaching Trump. The most notable of them is Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of the Republican leadership. She has been threatened with a primary challenge; some of her fellow GOP colleagues want her replaced as a congressional leader.

Therein is the problem facing Republican senators who might be inclined to convict Trump. Do they do what’s right and convict or do they seek to salvage their Senate careers by deciding to acquit?

The Senate will convene a trial on Feb. 9. The delay is of no particular consequence, given that Trump is now out of office. The only goal remaining is for Democrats and at least 17 Republicans vote to convict him, setting up a follow up vote: whether to ban Trump from ever seeking public office, which requires only a simple majority.

So … here we are. Fifty Senate Republicans face a reckoning. Do they punish a former GOP president who demonstrated for all the world that he is unfit for public office? Or do they scurry into the tall grass and avoid angering the cultists who continue to worship the ground on which Donald Trump treads?

I fear the latter … to their everlasting shame.

national news

Honor this hero!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Eugene Goodman has earned whatever honor Congress wants to bestow on him.

All he did was likely save lives during the insurrection that overwhelmed Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January. He serves as a Capitol Police officer and as a mob of terrorists stormed up a flight of stairs, Goodwin led the rioters away from where the Senate was meeting to ratify the results of the Nov. 3, 2020 presidential election. The video of that event has gone viral.

Now comes a proposal by three members of the House, two Democrats and a Republican, who want to give Goodman the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Does he deserve it? Hah! Does a bear defecate in the … oh, you know.

NBC News reports: Reps. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C., credited officer Eugene Goodman for “his bravery and quick thinking during last week’s insurrection.”

“He’s a hero!” Crist said. “The United States Capitol was under attack by armed, violent extremists, and Officer Eugene Goodman was the only thing standing between the mob and the United States Senate. I shudder to think what might have happened had it not been for Officer Goodman’s fast thinking and commitment to his duty and his country.”

He stopped the potential death of Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and only God knows who else might have been harmed by the insurrectionists.

This man, Eugene Goodman, is a top-drawer hero. He deserves a unanimous endorsement by Congress to receive this honor.

national news

Keep the filibuster, however …

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Democrats smell a certain radical political overhaul in the making.

They need to take great care if they intend to enact it. The filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate looms in the proverbial gunsights of congressional Democrats and their fellow activists out here in the peanut gallery.

They want to end it now that they have control of both congressional chambers and the White House

Senators can filibuster while opposing legislation they oppose. One of them can stand on the Senate floor and talk about anything they want. Sometimes they read from children’s books, or ramble on about this or that … they just bluster.

It requires a super majority of senators to end a filibuster.

The aim is to stop legislative momentum. The filibuster can be abused. And it has been abused in recent years, chiefly by Republican senators.

Democrats see an avenue to end the procedure now that they have the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, which is split 50-50; but Democrats have a weapon in the person of Vice President Kamala Harris, who can break a tie.

The filibuster — which dates to era of ancient Rome — protects the minority members’ political interests. Do I want the GOP to advance its legislative agenda? No. I don’t. I do, though, want to caution any Democratic zealot that their party is unlikely to remain in the majority forever. Political cycles have a way of wresting control from one party and handing it to the other one.

What happens if and when Republicans get control of the Senate, or the House or even the White House in the future?

I want to protect this process, with one provision: Democrats invoked what they called the “nuclear option” in 2015 by voting with a simple majority to end a filibuster that sought to block a judicial nominee put forward by President Obama. I don’t have a problem with maintaining that option.

As for the filibuster itself, let us just remember that what goes around, comes around. 

I am glad to see Democrats in control of the White House and Capitol Hill. Let’s not get carried away … hmmm?

national news

Let the trial begin …

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer has made it official.

The U.S. Senate will commence the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump on Feb. 8. That’s fine for a couple of key reasons.

The House will send the Senate the single impeachment article on Monday, triggering the eventual start of the trial. The House of Representatives impeached Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection. You saw what he did on the Sixth of January, inciting the riot that stormed Capitol Hill while Congress was meeting to certify President Biden’s victory on Nov. 3.

Why is the delay in the trial a good thing?

For one, Donald Trump is entitled to the best defense he can get. A delay allows the former president to assemble a legal team to defend him in the Senate. For the life of me I don’t know how you defend what I witnessed was the indefensible. Trump’s team will try to accomplish what I consider to be the impossible.

Secondly, delaying the trial enables the Senate commence on the important task of confirming President Biden’s Cabinet nominees and get to work on important legislation concerning pandemic relief, climate change, immigration reform and other issues the president has deemed critical.

I get that the Senate can “walk and chew gum at the same time,” as senators have noted. Delaying a trial won’t do any harm to determining the outcome. A delay allows Trump’s team to get its stuff together; it also allows House managers to do the same.

And so … let the trial begin eventually and let Congress get to work repairing the damage that the former president inflicted on our government.

national news

Unity is elusive, but not impossible

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden laid down a critical marker that in any other time would sound like just another platitude.

This isn’t just any other time. Joe Biden has become president of a nation still reeling from the tumult, turmoil and terror of recent weeks. He stood on the steps of a Capitol Building that just two weeks ago bore witness to a violet insurrection of terrorists hell bent on inflicting grievous damage to our democratic process.

Biden’s inaugural speech spoke of unity, of healing, of reconciliation. He wants us to be able to disagree politically but not do so out of anger.

Yes, the president has set the correct tone as he now moves forward along with the history-making vice president, Kamala Harris, who becomes the first woman, the first African-American, the first woman of Asian descent to become VP.

It has been quite a day. A moment for the ages.

Can the president achieve the unity he seeks? Sure he can. It will be tough climb. He inherits the highest office in a deeply divided land.

Let’s not be coy about the barriers standing before him. President Biden succeeds a man — who he never mentioned by name in his inaugural speech — who sought to sow division and who governed with no sense of the diversity our nation’s citizenry.

Moreover, Biden offered a moment of silent prayer for the 400,000 Americans who have died from the pandemic. When did his predecessor ever do that?

President Biden’s immediate predecessor is now gone, but the cult that formed upon his election four years ago remains. Yet, Biden spoke to them today, vowing to work just as hard for those who opposed his election as he will for those who endorsed it.

Whether the opponents hear and heed that message remains to be seen and heard. Oh, man … I hope he can deliver the goods.

All in all? This has been a good day for the United States.

I want to make one final point: President Biden spoke of the fragility of our democracy. I concur to a point. Fragility, though, does not mean it breaks easily.

Thus, our democracy remains as strong as tempered steel. We saw that strength today.

national news

Riot likely kills Trump’s political future

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Whether the Senate convicts Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection quite likely is a moot point at this juncture.

Trump will no longer be president when the Senate convenes his second impeachment trial. The House impeached him on a single charge, of inciting the terrorist attack on Capitol Hill on The Sixth of January.

Democrats need 17 Republicans to join them in convicting Trump. It’s still a long shot for conviction, but it is not as long of a shot as it was, say, two weeks ago. If the Senate convicts Trump, then it needs a simple majority to ban him from ever seeking public office.

To be honest, it looks for all the world to me that Trump’s political future vanished the day he exhorted the mob to attack the Capitol Building and interfere with Congress doing its duty to ratify Joe Biden’s victory.

If what is left of the Republican Party has half a brain left, it will shun Trump. It will deny him any leverage at all. It will seek others to carry the party banner in 2024, which Trump reportedly is interested in doing.

I get that Trumpism will survive long after Trump’s term as president expires — which it will do in just a few hours from now.

I will hold out hope that Donald Trump inflicted a mortal wound on the movement that carries his name on the Sixth of January when he whipped up the terrorists to attack the Capitol Building … and assault our system of government.

national news

Will any terrorists show up at Mar-a-Lago?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot help but wonder, given Donald Trump’s initial expression of “love” for the terrorists who attacked Capitol Hill on The Sixth of January …

Is the former president going to invite any of ’em to Mar-a-Lago for dinner and drinks with him and Melania?

Heavens no. Which directs me to the amazing irony of the lunatics who sought to disrupt Congress from declaring Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election.

It is that Trump doesn’t give a rat’s a** about the individuals who shattered the nation’s psyche in his name. They were mobsters, terrorists, rioters who poured into Washington because they swallowed the diet of lies that Donald Trump fed them. He said the election was fraudulent. That the result was “stolen” by hordes of illegal voters. That Trump, not Biden, won the election in a “landslide.”

We witnessed an amazing phenomenon on the sixth day of this month. Militants stormed into the Capitol Building. Many of them are known to be white supremacists; they are Holocaust deniers; they have KKK sympathies. They came from all over the nation.

One of them is a North Texas Realtor who said she was just doing her duty as a patriotic American. Hah! She committed an act of treason, in my humble view.

Meanwhile, their hero will be luxuriating in his posh resort in South Florida. He will have not a damn thing to do with any one of them.

They thought they were making America great again.

national news

Biden to restore empathy to high office

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It looks as though we have received a sneak  preview of what I believe might become a hallmark of a Joe Biden presidency.

The president-elect today bid so long to his beloved Delaware and while doing so teared up, talking about his late son, Beau and how his entire family will have “Delaware” inscribed in their hearts forever.

He ended his speech with tears streaking down both cheeks. Joe and Jill Biden have arrived in Washington and will get ready for the biggest day of their lives, when Joe Biden ascends to the pinnacle of political power.

Empathy, compassion, heart-felt emotion. That has been missing for the past four years. It is the kind of quality we occasionally need to see in the president of the United States. We caught a glimpse of it today and I suspect that as we move forward into the Biden presidency we are going to see much more of it.

I have noted before how the term “consoler in chief” isn’t described in writing in the president’s job description. It is implied. It is understood that at times — such as these — we need a president who can wrap his arms around grieving families and offer them the kind of emotional support they need.

Heaven knows, a nation in the midst of a killer pandemic needs that kind of empathy from our head of state. We have lost 400,000 Americans  to the COVID-19 virus. Many more will succumb to this disease. President Biden cannot snap his fingers and cure it just like that. He can, though, speak to us about the pain many of us are feeling. Indeed, a man who has endured unspeakable tragedy in his own life can understand; his wife and infant daughter died in a car crash many years ago and then he buried his son, Beau, just five years ago.

Joe Biden knows about pain. He knows how to relate to others who are suffering from similar pain.

We saw a touch of it today. I look forward to seeing much more presidential empathy as we move ahead.