Category Archives: national news

national news

Biden talks detail; Trump talks trash

3 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92/@hotmail.com

It’s been clear from the get-go, but it is coming into sharper focus the closer we get to the end of this election season.

It is that Joe Biden speaks in mind-boggling (at times) detail about the policies he wants to enact; meanwhile Donald Trump speaks in insulting and ignorant generalities.

Biden took a question from a young African-American man last night about what he would do to improve the lot of African-Americans, urging Biden to go beyond the “You ain’t black” quip that has gotten into trouble with black voters. Biden’s answer included a litany of policy plans that at times suggested that Biden was talking past the sale. The young man, though, seemed satisfied with Biden’s long-winded soliloquy.

Trump took a question about what plans he had in mind to replace the Affordable Care Act. He offered nothing. No plan. No alternative. No improvement or reform of what he keeps referring to as “Obamacare.”

They spoke to voters at competing town hall gatherings. Biden was in Philadelphia; Trump spoke in Miami.

I sense we’ll hear even more of this startling contrast in the men’s command — or lack of command — of the issues of the day.

Invective and innuendo are how Trump rolls. Biden speaks to us in detail about what he intends to do if he’s elected president of the United States.

I have heard enough of Trump’s trash talk. I want to hear more from Joe Biden.

national news

Still frightened at what might occur

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot shake the feeling of fear of what could happen down the stretch in this tumultuous election season.

What might that entail?

It would entail Donald Trump finding a way to cobble together yet another Electoral College victory while collecting as many as 5 million or maybe 6 million actual votes than Joe Biden.

You know the saying about “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Is it possible that we could be fooled a second time by this carnival barker/con man/charlatan?

I suppose anything is possible.

I see the polls each day. I thought I could ignore them. I cannot resist the temptation. They tell me Biden is doing damn near everything right. The polls were also favorable four years ago for Hillary Clinton; it didn’t work out that way.

Trump’s record is hideous. Across the board he has mismanaged our international alliances, our international agreements, the response to the COVID pandemic, the environment, race relations.

I want him out of the White House. I want him gone from the public stage. I want to restore the norms of dignity and decency and decorum to the presidency.

Biden promises to do that. I believe him. I disbelieve everything that comes from Donald Trump.

I also fear that Trump has one more nasty trick up his sleeve.

Oh, how I want him defeated.

 

national news

Yep, I chose the Biden town hall

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I had a chance tonight to watch Donald Trump’s town hall meeting in Miami. I chose to turn in to watch Joe Biden’s event in Philadelphia.

I do not regret that choice.

Joe Biden has my support in the upcoming presidential election. I wanted to hear him interact with voters. To be candid, I thought the quality of the questions outshone the quality of the some of the answers.

However, Joe Biden did not stumble. He didn’t mumble. He didn’t misspeak. He was sharp. He did talk perhaps too much.

I took a pass on Donald Trump. From what I have heard so far I didn’t miss a thing.

national news

Didn’t miss this spot on the ballot

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My wife and I did our patriotic duty earlier this week and voted in the Texas general election.

Do you know what I did not miss? I did not miss the spot on the ballot that would have allowed me to vote for all candidates of just one party.

The Texas Legislature was bitten by the Bug of Wisdom when it eliminated the straight-ticket spot on our ballots. I normally am critical of the Legislature for this and/or that issue, but they got this one right.

This year I was forced to go down the ballot race by race, name by name. I’ve never voted straight-party in all my years living in Texas. I wouldn’t have punched that spot on the ballot this year were I given the chance.

I did leave a few ballot spots blank. I did, though, walk through each race and I looked carefully at several of the races before making my selection.

That’s the way all of us should vote. I long have detested straight-ticket voting and I have argued for years that it should be eliminated from the ballot in Texas.

I’m glad the Legislature finally listened to me. Therefore, I will take all the credit I deserve.

You’re welcome.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2012/11/straight-party-voting-needs-to-go/

national news

A landslide in the making?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot stop thinking about how this presidential election might turn out.

I won’t predict an outcome. Why? Well, the last time I tried to make such a prediction — Hillary v. Donald in 2016 — I got the surprise of my political life. I actually wrote on this blog that I thought Clinton would roll up a landslide against Trump.

Oh, how wrong that was … yes? So, I’ll move on.

The difference between then and now is stark in at least one key aspect.

Joe Biden is rolling up a lot of Republican endorsements. Clinton did not enjoy such a broad crossover appeal four years ago. Indeed, I am thinking at this moment of the last time we saw this kind of inter-party attraction.

Barack Obama didn’t have it in either of his successful presidential election campaigns; nor did George W. Bush; Bill Clinton didn’t, either; George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan depended on GOP votes; Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford had nothing of the sort.

That brings me to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign. That was the first year I was able to vote for president. I cast my ballot for George McGovern. It turned out I was one of the “few and the proud” who voted for Sen. McGovern, who lost the popular vote by 23 percent and got swamped in the Electoral College 520-17.

That campaign featured an unusual crossover event: the formation of a group called Democrats for Nixon. The leader of that pack was a Texan named John Connally, the former governor of Texas. Big John cobbled together an alliance of Democratic pols who just couldn’t throw their support behind the progressive candidate for president. McGovern was just a squishy liberal who would surrender to the communists in Vietnam.

They helped propel President Nixon to a smashing victory.

As we move closer to the 2020 election, I am left to wonder whether the Republican pols who have turned their back on Donald Trump will be able to persuade their fellow Republicans into the Democratic fold.

Trump clearly has a firmer hold on the GOP faithful than McGovern ever had on Democrats; after all, he was nominated in 1972 at a convention that was damn near torn apart by intraparty disputes. That’s not the case now.

However, the enormous number of GOP-backed political operations that has turned on Trump fill me with a glimmer of hope that there well could be a significant victory for Joe Biden in store.

It won’t be on the scale of the landslide that Richard Nixon rolled up in 1972 … but it could be significant.

Do not hold me to this. My heart is speaking more loudly at this moment than my head.

national news

Get ready for the Hunter Biden slam

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I guess we’ll have to buckle up and prepare for the onslaught against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, given that Donald Trump can’t seem to lay a glove on the Old Man.

Joe Biden’s lead over Trump holds firm at 10 to 15 percent. His lead in “key battleground states” also appears solid. Trump is flailing. He likely knows he is in deep doo-doo with the electorate.

Now we hear from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who said something about digging up emails sent by Hunter Biden while he was doing business in Ukraine.

The rule of thumb appears to be this: If you cannot challenge the candidate’s record as a lifelong career politician, then go after his son as a way to smear/defame both father and son.

I will not be dissuaded from supporting Joe Biden. Hey, I’ve already voted and Biden is the direct beneficiary of my vote.

Yes, Donald Trump sickens me.

Let’s just remember what we heard when Hunter Biden’s first surfaced during the Trump impeachment inquiry. It came from Ukrainian prosecutors who said that neither of them — Joe or Hunter — did anything wrong.

national news

Poll shows NYT tax story makes little impact

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A New York Times bombshell report about Donald Trump’s taxes and the huge debt he owes to, um, someone apparently has made little impact on voters’ perception of Trump.

You know, I get it.

A poll by Hill-HarrisX says that the report makes no difference in how people intend to vote for president. It didn’t move the needle much at all, The Hill newspaper reports.

Duh!

I was adamantly opposed to Trump from the get-go, so the story didn’t influence me in the slightest. I sense that the Trumpkin Corps, which believes the New York Times conveys “fake news,” isn’t going to be moved, either. They believe the Liar in Chief no matter who contradicts him or no matter the mountain of evidence that Trump is a flat-out liar.

The reports, then, of the public opinion remaining static about the president really doesn’t surprise me. I only am baffled by the stubbornness with which the Trumpkins exhibit in expressing their undying love for this guy.

My wife pointed out a lawn sign near our house in Princeton, Texas, that proclaims support for Donald Trump, adding that he doesn’t “bullsh**” us. Really?

This individual is the King of BS, man!

national news

Litmus test, anyone?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I must have been dreaming it, but I always used to believe that politicians never admitted to requiring judges or judicial nominees to pass a “litmus test” to determine their fitness for a particular judgeship.

I suppose we can toss that truism out the window.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett is being grilled by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee over Donald Trump’s decision to nominate her to a spot on the Supreme Court.

She is known to be an avid anti-abortionist and a strong critic of the Affordable Care Act.

Trump has made it clear that he intended to nominate justices who were of that mind on both issues. He is now anti-choice on abortion after being pro-choice and he just cannot stomach having the ACA on the books because it comes from the president he detests with a passion, Barack Obama.

I am left now to ponder whether Trump asked Barrett — or two previous SCOTUS appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — questions related directly to those issues. I just wish I could have been a fly on the proverbial wall when he met with all three of them.

Trump’s lack of political savvy is well-known and well-chronicled at this point. A significant portion of me believes he likely asked them all directly: Will you rule against Roe v. Wade and against Obamacare? Just say “yes” and I’ll nominate you to the Supreme Court. Got it? Good!

It sickens me to believe this is possible. I fear that we’re now living in an era when the nation’s leading politician doesn’t give a damn about the appearance of litmus tests … other than to insist on applying them when they suit his political agenda.

 

legal news, national news

Merrick Garland haunts this hearing

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Merrick Garland is very much alive and well but his “ghost” floated throughout the hearing room today as a congressional hearing commenced on an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee welcomed another federal judge, Amy Coney Barrett, as she began her confirmation hearing to the U.S. Supreme Court. She would take the seat occupied by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.

Garland’s role in this drama? Well, he once got nominated to the high court by President Barack Obama. Another justice, Antonin Scalia, died in February 2016 while on vacation in Texas. President Obama wanted to nominate a successor. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time in declaring his intention to block that effort. Why? Because the voters had a right to be heard before a SCOTUS nomination would be considered by the Senate.

We had a presidential election in 2016. Obama couldn’t run again. It turned out that Donald Trump would win the election. So, Trump got to select someone to succeed Scalia; he chose Neil Gorsuch.

The hypocrisy between then and now is stunning in its scope.

We were 10 months away from the previous election when a vacancy occurred. Now, we’re just 22 days before the next election. Don’t Americans have a right to have their voices heard before the Senate considers a nominee to succeed Ginsburg? Of course we do.

Except that Republicans who at the moment hold the majority of Senate seats are pushing full speed with the Barrett hearing.

Most astonishing of all is the comment that Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham made in 2018. He said then that if an opening occurs during Donald Trump’s term as president and the “primary season has begun,” the Senate should hold off until after the election before considering a possible replacement.

Graham said we could hold his words against him. Fine. Many of us are doing that, Mr. Chairman.

Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t be my choice to join the court. I much prefer a jurist in the Merrick Garland mold: moderate, center-left in philosophical judicial outlook. Garland, though, never got the courtesy of a hearing, let alone a Senate vote, that appears to be in store for Judge Barrett.

It’s all because the Senate GOP majority played politics with the judicial nomination process in 2016 … and is doing so once again right now.

Shameful.

national news

Anxious to vote!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot even begin to believe how my attitude about early voting has changed, given the context of the time.

That said, I am waiting anxiously to cast my vote on Tuesday. My wife and I will trek to a local church to cast our ballots. We want to get them recorded into the electronic system. We will insist that our votes count … as if we don’t always insist on it.

Donald Trump has sought to cast doubt on the integrity of our electoral system. I don’t believe a word he says about “rampant voter fraud” as a result of mail-in balloting. Still, I want to ensure my vote gets logged into the massive system in Collin County, then counted among the millions of Texas ballots that will be cast.

Yes, Joe Biden has our support. We want to ensure he gets it. We need him to win this election. We need former Vice President Biden to restore the presidency to a level of respect, dignity and decorum that Donald Trump has plowed asunder.

We also need him to exhibit actual leadership in this fight against the pandemic that has killed more than 215,000 Americans.

I once would have held out until Election Day to cast my ballot. The tenor of our times prompts me to rethink that dedication to Election Day voting.

We’ll be standing in line if there is a line forming at the church where we intend to vote. We’ll be masked up, standing a “social distance” from our fellow Americans and we’ll observe all the instructions the poll workers will provide to keep us safe and healthy.

Bring it!