Category Archives: national news

national news

Most important election … ever!

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By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have reached a conclusion that others reached a long time ago, but it’s a big deal to me, so I am going to explain what it is and why it’s such a big deal.

The conclusion is that we are going to conduct the most important presidential election in at least the past century. Donald Trump v. Joe Biden is as big a deal as any I have seen since I’ve been voting and I suspect some even older folks would agree.

What’s at stake? I believe the size and gravity of the stakes make this election so incredibly critical. The stakes, simply put are the survival of our system of government.

In 2016, Donald Trump parlayed a desire for radical change in the way we govern into a fluky Electoral College victory. Roughly 77,000 voters in three Rust Belt states gave Trump the Electoral College margin he needed to win.

He said he would be “unconventional” and that he “alone” would solve our problems. He delivered on the first thing. As for the solution, he “alone” has made them worse.

Trump has lied and lied again and again. About everything. He has put unqualified individuals in key advisory roles; e.g., Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. He has burned through national security advisers and White House chiefs of staff. Trump has made a mess of everything he has touched.

He has fomented conspiracy theories. He has called Nazis and Klansmen “fine people.” He has appealed only to his base of fervent supporters.

The experiment in unconventionality has failed.

Joe Biden represents a return to normal governance, to what the late John McCain would call “regular order.” Biden is campaigning to restore our national soul. It needs restoration. Our soul has been damaged, but not destroyed, by Donald Trump and his hideous conduct.

I am a good government kind of guy. I much prefer my presidents to be better than I am. I want them to set moral examples. Biden represents a return to an era of good government. He spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as vice president.

Joe Biden knows how to govern. He is an ardent student of the government in which he has been a significant participant. Yes, I believe Joe Biden can restore our national soul and more importantly, revive our standing as the world’s most indispensable nation.

Thus, we are going to conduct the most significant election in anyone’s memory. It is, as Biden himself once said, a “big fu**ing deal.” 

national news

Trump’s America: a dangerous place

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

These Twitter messages illustrate rather nicely, in my oh-so-humble view, where Donald Trump’s re-election campaign breaks down.

The top tweet comes from someone quoting Vice President Mike Pence. You can see Pence’s message. Hold that thought.

The message from Ronald Klain offers a damning testimony to the reality of the moment. Klain, I should add, served on Vice President Biden’s staff in the Obama administration … so he has an axe to grind.

Klain does bring to light what should be painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain in their noggin. The coronavirus pandemic has killed nearly 200,000 Americans. The death and illness counts are climbing dramatically. They’re still going up and up. Why?

Well, because the Trump administration refused to act decisively when the pandemic arrived. He has been running a scattershot operation. He contradicts the advice of his handpicked medical experts on measures needed to stem the sickness and death rate.

Oh, and then there’s the civil unrest, the turmoil, the deaths of black Americans at the hands — and knees — of some rogue cops.

Is this a safe America? Is this the kind of nation we need to preserve with the re-election of Donald Trump? Hardly.

And yet the Trumpkin Corps keeps harping about how the United States will head straight to hell if Americans elect Joe Biden as president. Are you kidding me?

military news, national news

Yep, the shoe fits

“I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes. There is nobody that respects them more.”

Donald J. Trump

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Do you believe the commander in chief’s denial that he denigrated and disparaged the men and women who serve in our nation’s military?

Yeah. Me neither. Nor does Chuck Hagel, the former Republican U.S. senator from Nebraska and former defense secretary in the Obama administration.

The source of this angst comes from The Atlantic magazine, which published a story by Jeffrey Goldberg citing four anonymous sources who reportedly heard Trump speak ill of those who were wounded in action, were killed in action or taken prisoner by enemy forces.

According to USA Today: Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran and two-term Republican senator, told ABC News “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz that if Trump’s reported comments are “real, it’s beneath the dignity of any commander in chief. Truly they’re despicable.” 

OK, Hagel is giving Trump a sliver of a benefit of the doubt on the remarks attributed to him in The Atlantic. I saw the ABC News interview and I came away from watching it that Hagel truly believes the remarks fit a pattern that Trump already has exhibited.

No, this story won’t go away any time soon. Nor should it. The reporting paints the commander in chief in the most hideous context imaginable.

I would accept Donald Trump’s denial, that he would swear on anything he could find. Except that his constant and relentless lying has destroyed all semblance of credibility.

national news

Wary of transition prep

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at news that Joe Biden is hiring seasoned political hands to plan a transition from one presidency to another.

We are in the midst of a competitive presidential election contest. Biden is leading Donald Trump in most of those public opinion polls. So I guess it stands to reason that Biden would start thinking, um, strategically.

I say all of this with a knot in my gut. That old trick knee of mine is throbbing. I am getting the heebie-jeebies.

Of all the elections I have watched since I was old enough to know what they mean, none has piqued my desire more than this one. I want Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump; I want Biden to beat Trump like a drum; I want there to be no doubt over the winner.  I want Trump to exit my White House and I want him to disappear from public view forever.

OK, I know that last thing is impossible. Trump won’t do anything of the sort.

However, when I read that Biden has hired former South Bend, Ind., mayor (and former Democratic Party primary presidential candidate) Pete Buttigieg, former acting U.S. attorney general Sally Yates and former national security adviser Susan Rice for his transition team, I get, um, nervous. Extremely nervous.

The backdrop of all this involves the dread I feel about the measures Trump well could employ to snap victory from the jaws of defeat down the stretch of this campaign, which is what he did in 2016. Can he do it again? Well, yeah … do ya think?

Then there’s also the threat that Trump would cheat to secure a victory. Is he capable of doing that, too? I believe he is fully capable of trying anything. Anything!

A Biden transition team is an important component to secure as early as possible. It all presumes that Joe Biden’s standing will hold up as the campaign hurtles toward the finish line.

Through it all my fear — and the prospect does frighten me — is that Trump will be able to replicate the stunner of a victory he pulled off four years ago.

Oh, how I want the next 58 days to speed by.

national news

Trump to NC voters: Hey, break the law! Vote twice!

Donald J. Trump, who in 2016 invited Russia to hack into our electoral system, has now encouraged North Carolina voters to commit an illegal act.

He says they should seek to vote twice to test the state’s voting system, to see if it is as fail safe against voter fraud as state officials insist it is.

What in the name of good government have we come to in this country? The president of the United States, who took an oath to follow the law and to be faithful to the U.S. Constitution, is now suggesting that voters in one of our states break the law.

He is encouraging voters to cast their ballots by mail and by voting in person at the polling place. Good grief! This individual is nuttier than a fruitcake.

To think that he continues to cling to the support of roughly 40 percent of the voting public — give or take a point or two — simply blows my mind!

Trump is unhinged. Get a load of what Reuters is reporting as well: Voting more than once in an election is illegal and in some states, including North Carolina, it is a felony not only to vote more than once but also to induce another to do so.

Do you know what this means? It means we have a felon sitting in the Oval Office.

Arrest that man … and lock him up!

national news

Avoiding the ‘horse race’

The coverage of the Joe Biden-Donald Trump race for president is testing my patience.

It is so heavily focused on the “horse-race” aspect of the effort. Who’s up? Who’s down? Trend lines? Statistical probabilities? Betting odds?

It’s making my head spin.

If the 2016 campaign taught us anything, it ought to have taught us to dive much more deeply into the issues driving the campaign than the horse race aspect of it. Hillary Clinton won more votes than Trump. But she lost the race. You know the drill: Trump won enough Electoral College votes to eke out a victory, only to lie relentlessly about his “landslide” victory over Hillary.

In fact, though, Hillary’s final vote total reflected almost exactly what the average of the polls showed on Election Day.

But we now have a new contest. Joe Biden is “ahead” at the moment. I just don’t want to get fixated on that part of the campaign. I want to call attention on this blog to the differences in the candidates’ stance on issues … although it is damn near impossible to determine what Donald Trump thinks about anything of substance.

I’ll just have to persevere through the rest of this campaign. I will do my level best to ignore the polls. If only the media would stop reminding me hourly of where the candidates stand in relation to each other’s standing.

I’m ready to vote. I am ready for this chapter to end. I am ready to get on with the rest of the story, wherever it leads.

national news

Perfect end to campaign might produce chaotic transition of power

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My version of a perfect world includes Donald Trump losing the presidency of the United States to Joseph R. Biden in about, oh, 62 days.

It includes a significant Biden victory in both the actual ballots cast and in the Electoral College. Trump, though, is sending plenty of signals that he well might not go silently into the night, concede the contest, offer his full cooperation and then let the new team take over.

I have retired my trick knee, the one that betrayed me badly by allowing me to predict a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016.

So I want to offer this observation of what might occur if my perfect world plays out in November and we elect Joe Biden the next president.

The transition is going to be a cluster fu** of the first magnitude.

Does anyone really expect Trump to provide a smooth transition from one administration to the next one?

I am trying to imagine Joe and Jill Biden arriving at the White House to be greeted by Donald and Melania Trump. Do you see the couples smiling at each other, posing for the cameras?

Moreover, something tells me that no one should be surprised if Donald and Melania Trump don’t even attend the inaugural of the next president. Yes, I believe that Donald Trump is that much of a sore loser, that he would decide to forgo the boos that would rein down on him as he watches Biden take the oath of office.

Donald Trump’s entire presidency has been a case study in chaos and confusion. Why would anyone expect a transition to the next president to be anything other than what we have witnessed.

It won’t be pretty. However, political perfection need not always be a thing of beauty.

local news, national news

Going to vote early … on the first day

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

I cannot even believe I am saying this, but I must blurt it out.

Texas opens its polling places for early voting on Oct. 13. I intend to be among the first in line to cast my ballot for president of the United States of America.

I will be wearing my mask. I’ll have my spray-on hand sanitizer in my pocket. I will keep a socially distant space between myself and the total strangers with whom I intend to be standing.

You see, this represents a monumental sea change for yours truly. I am one who is wedded to the pageantry of voting on Election Day. I have enjoyed Election Day voting since I cast my first ballot in the spring of 1972 when I voted in Oregon’s Democratic primary.

Every presidential election year since has seen my wife and me troop to the polls on Election Day.

Not this year.

The coronavirus pandemic has me worried about getting infected. My wife is even more militant about the measures we need to take than I am. Texas isn’t likely to join several other states in requiring mail-in voting, given our state’s political leadership and its fealty to Donald Trump, who suggests — wrongly, I have to say — that mail-in voting is fraught with corruption. He’s lying.

So my wife and I will troop to the polls on Oct. 13. We will cast our votes as early as possible. We want them logged into the high-powered electronic system they use in Collin County. I heard this week that the Allen Event Center will open as a voting center for county residents. It is a spacious venue that will enable voters to practice social distancing while casting their ballots. I will be there among those early voters.

You know who will get my presidential vote. It won’t be the incumbent. Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice among the huge field of Democrats running initially. Indeed, I really never found anyone among the field who stood out.

Biden is the last man standing. He endured the grueling process. He won a key endorsement on the eve of the South Carolina primary, which he then won handily … and he never looked back.

So now I’m all in for Joe.

The process through which he gets my support, though, is the element I want to underscore. We live in perilous times as the nation battles a pandemic that continues to kill Americans at a heartbreaking rate. I do not want to risk becoming infected.

So, if voting early enables me to do my civic duty proudly while staying safe from a killer virus, that’s the way it’s going to be.

national news

Mini-strokes? Huh? What?

Let’s try to unpack this bit of prose.

New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt has just published a book, “Donald Trump v. The United States.” He writes in the book that on Nov. 16, 2019, Trump was taken to Walter Reed Military Hospital for an unscheduled visit. The White House informed Vice President Pence to stand by in case the president would be incapacitated by heavy sedation.

Schmidt writes that Pence never assumed the presidency in a temporary fashion. He writes only that Trump was treated for a “mystery” ailment.

What, then, is up with this Twitter message from Trump. He denied in a tweet that he suffered any “mini-strokes” or a “stroke.”

Hey, wait a second! No one reported a thing about mini-strokes! Donald Trump today broke that bit of news all by himself, without prompting, without any reason on Earth to issue a denial!

Has the president just opened the door to open speculation about his physical health?

national news

Is the POTUS going bonkers?

We hear this nonsense about Joe Biden’s mental acuity coming from political allies of Donald Trump.

It makes me laugh out loud. Why?

Well, Donald Trump — to my eyes and ears — is exhibiting some signs his own self of going slightly nuts. I do not mean to suggest he is certifiably nutty, or even that he has lost a step or three in the mental acuity department.

I do mean to ask out loud why Trump is fomenting conspiracy theories about “rigged” elections. Have you watched Trump speak at those rallies of late? The guy cannot craft a cogent message. He has yet to tell us what he intends to do in a (God forbid!) second term as president.

There have been some tell-all tales published of late that disclose reports of shady business dealings, of how the first lady and the first daughter cannot stand the sight of each other.

My goodness, I cannot keep up with the madness I am witnessing in the White House.

Trump is out of control. Just think that this is the guy in control of the nuclear launch codes.

But … his fans think he’s the bee’s knees. Go figure.