Category Archives: national news

crime news, national news, national security, political news

‘Trump is done’

Brian Karem, a writer for Salon, is preaching to the proverbial choir when he declares the storm that’s a brewin’ might be the one that takes out Donald Trump, sends him home to … wherever.

And then he’ll be gone from our consciousness. Presumably for the rest of his time walking this good Earth.

That’s my hope. That’s the hope, apparently, of a growing number of Americans who have grown sick, tired and bored out of their skulls at Trump’s one-note samba that kicks out the lyrics to The Big Lie.

Read Karem’s latest essay here:  A storm is coming: It might sweep Trump and the GOP into history’s dustbin (msn.com)

I have been struck by the stone-cold silence from the Trumpkin cabal of cultists over the documents the FBI seized at Trump’s posh estate. Not even the likes of Jim Jordan, or Rand Paul, or Lindsey Graham, or any other of the Trump cult followers can come up with an explanation on how top-secret documents found their way from the White House to Trump’s South Florida pad.

Then we hear from Trump himself, saying in a totally insane social media rant that the FBI grabbed the documents from his desk and scattered them on the floor for the world to see.

What the hell? That is a defense of what Trump did? Good grief, he just admitted to breaking federal law!

As Karem said in his essay:

So, yes — there is a storm coming. It’s not a civil war. It’s a reckoning — and I reckon the GOP would rather not face it. All the Democrats have to do is show up and vote, and the Republicans’ beloved Supreme Court gave them an excellent reason to do so.

The FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was merely an affirmation that those eager to flee the GOP needed, to let them know their instincts were right. When the facts are understood, Donald, it turns out that nobody likes a traitor.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news, State news

Age limits on guns: ‘unconstitutional’?

Greg Abbott cannot be serious … but he surely is being serious when he declares that attempts to increase the minimum age for individuals to buy high-powered rifles are “unconstitutional.”

I will have to disagree with the Texas governor, a Republican who continues to hide behind a canard that declares the Second Amendment doesn’t specify age limits for keeping and bearing arms.

The debate has arisen in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre when an 18-year-old shooter purchased two AR-15 rifles, then walked into Robb Elementary School where he killed 19 children and two educators before the cops killed him.

The Texas Tribune reported: Abbott at his Wednesday campaign event brought up court rulings against gun restrictions from the past three months, including a federal court in Fort Worth on Thursday that struck down a Texas law limiting adults under 21 from carrying handguns. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman wrote that the Second Amendment does not specify limits on age.

Greg Abbott says raising the age to buy assault rifle is unconstitutional | The Texas Tribune

Pittman is correct. The Second Amendment makes no mention of age limits. I guess the judge presumes, therefore, that a six-year-old is able to carry a pistol in his pocket. Hey, the Constitution is silent on age limits, right?

That, of course, is nonsense. It is in my mind just as nonsensical to suggest that state legislatures or Congress, for that matter, cannot enact laws that restrict the age of those who can purchase weapons such as those the moron used in Uvalde.

Therein sits one more reason to vote Greg Abbott out of office when Election Day rolls around.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news, national security, political news

All eyes on DOJ, but wait …

Millions of Americans — such as me — are fixated at the moment on the U.S. Department of Justice seizure of those “highly classified” documents from Donald J. Trump’s glitzy home in Florida.

I keep hearing an endless string of legal analyses that suggest an indictment of someone — perhaps the ex-president — is inevitable.

Let’s be clear, though, about something that is getting buried under all the rhetoric about the DOJ probe: It is just one of several investigations underway concerning the criminal behavior many of us believe occurred during the entirety of Trump’s single term as POTUS.

What’s brewing? Let’s see:

  • A Fulton County (Ga.) grand jury is looking into whether Trump tampered with election results by demanding that the Georgia secretary of state “find” enough votes to turn the election result there from pro-Joe Biden to pro-Trump.
  • The New York attorney general is examining whether the Trump Organization falsified its assets to (a) obtain favorable loans or (b) avoid paying debts it owes.
  • The House 1/6 select committee is probing whether Trump committed an act of sedition against the U.S. government by inciting the attack on the Capitol and then was derelict in his duty as POTUS by refusing to call off the attack once it commenced, resulting in injury and death to police officers and at least one attacker.

That’s several full plates, don’t you think?

Of all those probes, the one that needs to be finished soon is the congressional investigation. The midterm election well could result in Republicans taking control of the House and we all know what’ll happen then: the GOP leadership will shut it all down and will pretend there is nothing to see.

There happens to be plenty to see and do, which makes the House panel’s work all the more urgent.

It’s almost enough to make me wonder how in the name of sanity does the former president or those closest to him avoid being charged with some criminal act. I cannot assess which of the potential charges are forthcoming, or which of them will emerge as the most serious.

I do have this nagging gut grumble that’s telling me that when the legal eagles finish their work, we’re about to see history made in a way that will make the 45th POTUS a mighty unhappy man.

Shall we all just stay tuned?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Weaponization anyone?

Wait just a dadgum minute. Didn’t those Republican idiots who stood up for Donald Trump accuse Democrats of “weaponizing” the impeachment process during both of the impeachments that Trump endured?

Yeah, they did. What in the name of pure partisan politics is going on now with Republicans in the House saying they’re getting ready to impeach President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Vice President Harris — and perhaps even the White House chef, for all I know — if they seize control of the House after the midterm election?

What in the world would be the basis for any of this absolute horsesh**? Is it because, um, that Biden managed to pass legislation without GOP help in Congress? Or that Garland decided to issue a lawful search warrant to find documents that Trump pilfered from secure locations in the White House? Of that Harris cast tie-breaking votes when Republicans failed to join Democrats in enacting legislation designed to help Americans?

Or — what the hell? — maybe the White House chef cooked a souffle that deflated too early?

I don’t know. I do know that whenever I hear this nonsense coming from the GOP side of the great divide on Capitol Hill, it fills me with a modicum of hope that voters across the land might be able and willing to spare us all the nightmare that awaits if the GOP takes control of Congress.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news, political news

Trump is insane

How do I say this nicely? OK, I cannot, so I will not … say it nicely.

Donald Trump is insane. His butter has slipped off his noodle. He needs to be committed immediately to the nearest nut house.

The former twice-impeached president of the United States, the nimrod who lost to President Biden in 2020, says he needs to be “reinstated” immediately to the office he lost in a free, fair and legal election. Or there needs to be another election to settle the outcome of the 2020 contest once and for all.

Trump Ridiculed After Calling for His Reinstatement: ‘Ridiculous at Best’ (msn.com)

OK, let’s see. The outcome was settled already. President Biden collected 81.2 million votes to Trump’s 74.2 million votes. Biden won the Electoral College total with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232; Biden needed 270 electoral votes to win the election.

Trump continues to insist, without a shred of evidence, that the 2020 election was rigged, stolen … whatever.

This individual is nuts. He also is considering whether to run for the office again.

Lock him up!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Why give these rookies so much attention?

Regular readers of this blog might remember when I took a then-rookie member of Congress to task for being so damn out front on every issue imaginable. She is a progressive Democrat from New York City: Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

She was, well, everywhere. At once! She seemed to defy the laws of physics. She even became known as AOC and became the most visible member of a progressive team of congresswomen known as The Squad.

OK, she’s now in her second term, along with other members of The Squad.

She has given way to another brand of congressional newcomer. This latest batch comes from the other end of the spectrum. These are the right-wingers, adherents to that thing called QAnon.

President Biden recently referred to one of the leaders of the Class of 2020 gang of loudmouths as “What’s Her Name.” The representative from the 14th Congressional District of Georgia just couldn’t stand that kind of put-down. Hey, I thought it was so good, I am going to adopt as my own rule of referencing her in this blog.

From now until I decide otherwise, I’ll refer to this idiot as What’s Her Name. You’ll likely know to whom I am referring.

I guess in a way, Rep. What’s Her Name took a page from AOCS’s playbook two years earlier. Something comes up that gets the media’s attention? Rep. What’s Her Name shows up in front of a bank of microphones. She then spews whatever nonsense she can find. Reporters scribble their notes furiously. She gets all the attention in the world … none of which, I believe, she deserves.

There used to be an unwritten rule that suggested that House members or senators needed at least a term, or two, to earn any attention.

Hah! That rule, just like so many others, has been flushed away.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, national news

Graham says riots will ensue if Trump indicted?

The English language seems to lack terminology I determine to be strong enough to condemn the message delivered this weekend by Sen. Lindsey Graham.

The South Carolina Republican said riots will explode on our streets if Donald Trump is prosecuted for breaking the law.

Did the senator call for calm? Did he offer condemnation if that were to occur? Did he call on his cult leader, Trump, to tell the shrinking base of cultists to stand down?

Hell no!

All he did was “predict” street riots would occur.

What a disgraceful comment from a supposedly serious member of the U.S. Senate!

The more that flies out of Graham’s pie hole, the less I think of him.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, national news, national security

We’re in fine hands

You hear the refrain — too often, it seems — from those who lament what they perceive is the demise of civilization, particularly when it regards the “next generation.”

Those who complain about such things have a clear lack of understanding of this significant fact. Which is that people have been gloom-and-dooming our good Earth’s future since the beginning of time.

I like to cite the Greek philosopher Plato’s refrain about how young people five centuries before Jesus’s birth were unkempt, how they didn’t snow respect for their elders and how the world would be handed over to a generation of misfits.

He was a smart man. Plato also was wrong.

I hear much the same thing today from those who continue to insist that “today’s generation” doesn’t show proper respect, or that they are shiftless, lazy, too interested in self-importance.

I am certain every older generation that preceded the current crop of old fogies — such as yours truly — said the same thing about the younger generations coming along.

Did my grandparents once lament how their kids — my parents and their siblings — wouldn’t amount to a pile of kindling? Oh, probably. Then what happened? World War II exploded across our planet and gave birth to humanity’s Greatest Generation!

You never know how fate determines these the future … correct?

I want to say something positive about today’s younger generation. I spoke just recently about Maxwell Frost, a Generation X citizen seeking to be elected to Congress from Florida. The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School spurred Frost to “do something” to end gun violence. So, he decided as he turns 25 to run for Congress.

He’s just one of many young people who want to make a difference.

Frost and others fill me with hope — and an expectation — that our world will be just fine as we old timers depart.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Cheney should rethink this notion

Lame-duck Liz Cheney is considering a run for the presidency in 2024. On one hand, I endorse the notion of the Wyoming Republican congresswoman running for the GOP presidential nomination.

On the other hand, the prospect of Cheney running for POTUS as an independent candidate — a notion she hasn’t yet ruled out — could prove disastrous.

Why? Well, Cheney said she is going to commit her remaining time in public life to ensuring that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the Oval Office ever again. I applaud her noble goal. And it is a noble calling, given the damage that Trump could deliver to the presidency were he sent back to the White House. Oh, jeez, the thought makes my gut tighten.

If Cheney were to run as an independent, from whom does she draw her votes? Those who would vote for President Biden only because they, too, cannot stomach the thought of Trump returning to power would be inclined to vote for Cheney. So, if Cheney runs as an independent candidate for POTUS, her presence on the fall 2024 ballot could serve as a major spoiler.

A part of me wants to see Cheney stand on a GOP debate stage with Trump and other Republicans seeking the White House. She would eviscerate The Donald. However, that doesn’t preclude Trump from winning the GOP nomination … presuming he runs, of course.

And therein lies the danger of Cheney staying in the hunt for the White House if she doesn’t win the GOP nomination. Does she run as an indy and, therefore, likely siphon votes from President Biden?

She wouldn’t like this comparison, but a Cheney presence as an independent reminds me of what Ralph Nader did to help elect George W. Bush president in 2000. The consumer advocate, Nader, drew votes that would have gone to Al Gore in that election, serving as legitimate spoiler in many states where his total exceeded the difference between Bush and Gore.

Play it carefully, Rep. Cheney. I am proud of the stand she has taken in this effort to investigate Trump’s role in the 1/6 insurrection. My pride would disappear, though, if she manages through her own hubris to help Trump blunder his way back into power.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, media news, national news, political news

Is that all there is? Yep, that’s it!

The Wall Street Journal, a longtime champion of conservative causes and those who promote them, wants to know why all the fuss over the FBI search of Donald Trump’s home in search of incriminating evidence.

The Journal, owned by Trump sycophant Rupert Murdoch, questions the release of the heavily redacted affidavit that gave FBI permission to go through Trump’s posh estate.

The newspaper editorializes: It’s possible the redactions in the 38-page document release contain some undisclosed bombshell. But given the contours of what the affidavit and attachments reveal, this really does seem to boil down to a fight over the handling of classified documents. The affidavit’s long introduction and other unredacted paragraphs all point to concern by the FBI and the National Archives with the documents Mr. Trump retained at Mar-a-Lago and his lack of cooperation in not returning all that the feds wanted.

I have to ask: Why question the motive behind the search … and no, I will not call it a “raid”?

There remains a lot behind those redacted passages we don’t understand. There might be the ol’ smoking gun in there. But from what I have been able to glean so far, the FBI said it had enough evidence of “probable cause” that a crime has been committed on Trump’s property. Hell, there might even have been crimes committed within the White House.

The release of the redacted affidavit is enough to persuade me that the federal government appears set to prepare an indictment or maybe two or three against — oh, you know — someone very high up in the government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com