Category Archives: national news

national news

2020: Year of the First Responder

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am pretty sure we all agree on this point: 2020 sucks out loud.

This calendar year has been one of the most eventful, consequential — and miserable — years many of us can remember. Our grandparents no doubt recall the Great Depression and then World War II. Then we had 1968, which brought the Vietnam War to a head and those terrible political assassinations.

But this year stands alone. The pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings. Now we have the fires that are sweeping through the three Pacific Coast states.

All of this is my way of saying that 2020 surely must be deemed The Year of the First Responder.

Heroes walk among us. They are the nurses and doctors who are tending to coronavirus patients. These nurses and doctors also are doubling as surrogate loved ones for patients who die alone; they cannot have their actual loved ones near them because of the highly infectious nature of the coronavirus, leaving the handholding to the medical pros who put their own lives on the line just tending to their patients.

Now comes the fires. The firefighters and police officers are plunging into the Hell on Earth in California, Oregon and Washington. They are running toward the flames. They are flying aircraft into the choking smoke. They are hugging victims of the fire, trying as best they can to lend comfort in a time of unspeakable tragedy.

Oh, we also have that presidential election coming up. Who’ll win it? Well, whether it’s Joe Biden or Donald Trump, the editors at Time magazine need not worry about naming one of them the magazine’s Person of the Year. They are playing second fiddle to the heroes in our hospitals, in our school classrooms, in our forests and our neighborhoods.

We all want the circumstances that are making this the most memorable year to end. I happen to stand in awe of those who are answering the call to help their fellow men and women in distress.

Stand tall, heroes.

national news

Career pol vs. rank amateur

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am wondering when the term “career politician” became a four-letter word, an epithet that no one wants to have plastered next to their name.

In the context of the 2020 campaign for the U.S. presidency, I am going to say out loud and with crystal clarity that I much prefer a career politician over the rank amateur who are vying for the nation’s highest political office.

Joseph Biden Jr. is the career politician in this race. Donald J. Trump is the other guy. The rank amateur has had nearly four years to fix the things he said that he could repair all by himself. He hasn’t gotten the job done.

Biden’s pledge? He wants to restore our national soul. Beyond that, Biden wants to bring a sense of public service to the apex public service job in America.

Yes, Biden is a career politician. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. He served there for 36 years. Then he accepted Barack Obama’s offer to run as vice president in 2008. He served for two times at President Obama’s side.

A career politician doesn’t have to be someone who enriches himself on the public dime. He doesn’t need to lie just because he fears the truth. A career politician can, indeed, be someone who is dedicated to public service.

A career politician quite often is someone who understands the complexities of government … and it is a complex endeavor. Legislating is complicated. It often requires compromise, which results when a career pol gives a little and takes a little here and there. The career politician works with other career politicians who might share different world views, but they all seek a common goal.

I am not a Pollyanna who thinks all career pols are paragons of virtue. I’ve known my share of snakes and skunks in public life. I just don’t happen to believe that Joe Biden falls into that category of career politician.

As for snakes and skunks, well, they exist in the so-called “real world” of business, too. Do you get my drift here?

Donald Trump sold many of us a bill of goods in 2016. He called himself a self-made success story. He is neither self-made nor is he a successful businessman. Sure, he’s rich and he reminds us of that fact regularly. He’s also insecure, which reveals itself by his constant reminders of his gawdy lifestyle.

He doesn’t know how government works. He has no intention of learning how it works. Trump doesn’t care about you or me. Only about himself. Public service is not in his DNA and it was nowhere to be found in his background before he became a politician.

I want my government to work again. I am more than willing to put my government back in the hands of a career politician who knows how to maneuver the levers.

national news, Uncategorized

How does Trump keep it close?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s see how this looks.

Donald Trump has been impeached by U.S. the House of Representatives; he has insulted the military high command; he lets Russian spooks get away with putting bounties on our warriors; he admits to lying to Americans about the severity of the global pandemic; he has shattered our longstanding military and diplomatic alliances; he has presided over the greatest economic collapse in our nation’s history; he called Klansmen and Nazis “very fine people”; and he has lied about damn near every issue that he has (allegedly) confronted.

And still, this individual just might — even against these horrendous odds — wiggle/slither his way back for a second term as president of the United States.

How in the world might this happen, given Trump’s astonishing record as president of the United States? I cannot put my arms around this phenomenon. I am left to speculate that just possibly Americans have been snookered by the carnival barker who promised them to deliver salvation to a nation he said in 2016 had devolved into a “total disaster.”

And so here we are, four years later. The phony business executive not only has failed to deliver us from the illness that he vowed to cure all by himself, he has worsened it.

The pandemic has killed nearly 200,000 of us … so far. Trump has defamed war heroes and prisoners of war. He scolds our international allies. He has turned us from the world’s most indispensable nation to an international laughingstock.

How does he stay within spitting distance of Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee who by most objective measures should be running far away from Trump?

It’s a head-scratcher that utterly boggles my mind.

national news

9/11: Memory still burns hot

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It was 19 years ago when our lives changed possibly forever.

As I look back on that terrible Tuesday morning, I find myself swallowing hard. My throat develops that lump when I see the Twin Towers collapse onto the street in lower Manhattan. I have difficulty watching video of the men, women and children running for their lives.

Yes, our lives changed when we saw what happens when terror shows its ugliness. It did on that day in 2001.

Of course I remember that day. I remember my reaction when my colleague told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I remember turning on the small TV in my office and watching in real time the second jetliner crash into the other tower.

Then the sh** hit the fan.

We went to war against the Taliban, against al-Qaeda, against any organization that sided with the religious perverts who struck at our heart. I have said for all that time that we may never be able to declare victory as we have done in many of our previous wars. I will stand by that assertion.

Pundits were enraged and expressed their rage with eloquence. I tried to bring my own meager talents into play. In reality, the attack stands alone as a testament to the cruelty that humankind can rein down on ourselves.

It doesn’t get any easier to recall that terrible day, the attacks on the Twin Towers, on the Pentagon and when those brave passengers aboard the jetliner crashed the airplane into the field, sparing yet another target from destruction.

I will get through the day after spending it thinking and remembering how our nation was alerted in the starkest terms imaginable to the danger that lurks all around us.

national news

POTUS makes strange SCOTUS ploy

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have been intrigued by Donald Trump’s decision to roll out the names of possible U.S. Supreme Court appointments should he win a second term as president of the United States.

I guess I come down to this notion: Trump is playing with fire by throwing out names while he is in the midst of a campaign that might rile the dickens out groups of voters who detest the philosophies of the prospective nominees.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has gotten the most buzz out of the list of 20 names tossed out there by Trump. You know this guy, whom I have labeled the Cruz Missile owing to his rather mercurial political trajectory.

He actually wants to be elected president one day, which to my way of thinking suggests he wouldn’t want to end up on the high court.

But back to the point. Trump’s tactic here puts his re-election effort in some jeopardy.

All of the names he has floated are, for example, likely to be avidly anti-reproductive rights advocates. They all would oppose a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. How do you suppose that’s going to play with suburban women, who already are tilting strongly away from Trump and toward the candidacy of Joseph Biden?

Yes, I know Trump has his support base that thinks the tactic is working out just fine. I just consider it a huge gamble at this juncture of a campaign that by all objective measure isn’t going well.

I suppose, therefore, I shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about any of this.

So … I won’t.

national news

Is POTUS really this stupid?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Stupidity has reared its elaborately coiffed head in the White House.

I am trying to understand how Donald Trump could tell a reporter — on the record — that the coronavirus pandemic is destined to kill potentially thousands of Americans while telling the rest of us that the virus is “like the flu” and is “under control.”

So now the reporter, the legendary Bob Woodward, is about to publish a book , “Rage,” that chronicles the gloomy forecast Trump gave to him in February while POTUS at the same time is spinning an entirely different message to the American public.

I think some of us would call that a supreme act of “stupidity.” How in the name of candor does Donald Trump think he can get away with deliberately withholding valuable information from Americans while at that moment telling a reporter the actual truth about what he saw coming all along?

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden blames Trump directly for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Their lives are lost and Trump is responsible, Biden has declared.

Joe Biden is correct. Donald Trump just admitted to telling us a deadly lie. As for whether Woodward should have reported what he learned in real time, that’s another subject for another time.

We have a case here of the president of the United States purposely ignoring the oath he took to protect Americans.

Astonishing!

national news

No ‘fake news’ here

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A Donald Trump campaign staffer laid it on the line.

“Hard to say fake news when there is audio of his comments,” the staffer said.

What we have here are Donald Trump’s own words saying things that have caused yet another eruption on the 2020 presidential election campaign trail.

Donald Trump spoke at length with legendary reporter Bob Woodward, who’s about to release a book, “Rage.” What did Trump say that has caused such an upheaval? Oh, only that he knew in February that the COVID-19 pandemic was a deadly event, but that he deliberately withheld any warning signs of doom because he didn’t want to cause “panic” among Americans.

So, let’s see how we connect a few dots.

Donald Trump vowed to protect Americans when he became president of the United States. Then in the earliest weeks of 2020, a virus was detected overseas. Donald Trump’s initial public reaction was to declare that the coronavirus would disappear, that it would vanish like a “miracle.” No sweat, he said. Nothing to see here, he reminded us.

Except now we hear that he knew early on that we had a relentless killer knocking on our door. And that Donald Trump refused to do a damn thing to protect Americans.

Good ever-lovin’ grief! Is this a “promise kept” or is it a sacred oath violated?

The word now is that the Trump campaign and the White House are “scrambling” to craft — or concoct — a cogent message to respond to Trump’s own words.

There, indeed, can be no “fake news” retort from Team Trump, or from Trump himself. Although, and this point should be made, not a damn thing ever has prevented Trump from invoking that phony excuse even when the evidence has been laid directly at his feet.

national news

Trump sets the bar so very low

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I guess I have figured out how Donald Trump gets away with his lying, his misleading statements and his continual assaults on foes via innuendo and invective.

Trump has managed to lower the bar to ground level. That is to say that Americans do not expect this guy to behave like a mature, sophisticated and nuanced adult as he conducts the affairs of state.

Trump has changed the equation. I just hope it isn’t a forever change.

That all circles back to why I want him defeated Nov. 3. It is why I want Joe Biden to take office in January as our 46th president of the United States.

A famed Republican lawyer, an expert on elections, has written an op-ed in which he declares that Trump’s so-called fear of election fraud caused by mail-in balloting is “misleading.”  So said Ben Ginsburg. Will it move anyone away from Trump’s avid base of supporters? Hardly. Again, they have no expectation of intellectual or moral honesty from the president.

Do not consider me to be naive, but I always have wanted — and expected — presidents to be better than the rest of us. I long have looked up to the men who have sat in that chair behind the Resolute Desk. I was born during the Truman years, but since the days of President Eisenhower — the man I first remembered as our nation’s leader — I have thought well enough of each man that they have earned my respect.

Until now.

Donald Trump has squandered that respect. He frittered it away from the years he spent as a reality TV celebrity and as a flimflam real estate mogul.

Then he became president. Jeez, I am having trouble even acknowledging these days that he was “elected” to the office. I digress. Back to my point.

Donald Trump has set the expectations for his behavior to a level I do not recognize. It’s not that I want him to reach higher. I know better than to expect the impossible to occur.

Joe Biden isn’t the perfect alternative to Donald Trump. Based on his own sense of decency and his ability and willingness to tell us the truth even when it hurts, he has earned my support.

Just maybe Joe Biden can hoist that expectations bar to a more rational, respectable and customary level.

national news

Why sit on this news?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I didn’t originate this thought, but I want to forward it to you on this blog?

A good friend of mine wonders why Bob Woodward, the esteemed Washington Post reporter and editor, didn’t tell the world in February what Donald Trump told him in the moment: that he knew the COVID crisis could be deadly, but he kept it from us because he didn’t want to “cause panic.”

Woodward tells us in an upcoming book titled “Rage” that Trump knew all along that the pandemic could kill a lot of folks, but decided to downplay it.

As my friend wonders, that was in February. Now we know what Woodward knew back then. That was 191,000 American deaths ago from the COVID-19 virus.

Hmm. That is a fascinating matter to ponder.

I do hope that when Woodward hits the TV news interview circuit to talk up his book that the talking heads have the good sense to ask him why he sat on that news for as long as he did … and whether he is as complicit in the deaths that have occurred as Donald Trump!

national news

Trump is all the ‘Rage’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Robert Woodward practically needs no introduction.

He is a legendary journalist who, with the equally legendary Carl Bernstein, produced a body of work that resulted in the near impeachment and resignation on an American president.

So now he has sat down with Donald Trump and is about to release a new book called “Rage.” What did Trump tell Woodward … to his face? Oh, just that he knew in February that the coronavirus pandemic was serious and could kill thousands of people but that he kept that information from the public.

Trump told Woodward, “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

OK, there you go. Donald Trump took an oath to protect Americans. He has admitted to Robert Woodward that he welshed on that promise. On purpose!

How in the world is Trump going to defend this once the book is published? Oh, I know. He’ll say Woodward made the quotes up, that he never said it and that the legendary journalist is a practitioner of “fake news.”

To think as well that millions of Americans will buy into the president’s ridiculous denial!