Category Archives: political news

local news, national news, political news

Clearing the air on GOP

I feel the need to clear the air and disabuse some readers of this blog who might be drawing an incorrect inference … which is that I hate all Republicans.

Not true. Not even close to being true. What I do hate is what has become of the Republican Party, which has morphed into a cult dedicated to the ambition of one man, a former president who has managed to persuade his followers that he has more talent, more know-how and more knowledge than he actually does.

My final stop in my 37-year print journalism career took me to the heart of conservative Republicanism. The Texas Panhandle is as rock-ribbed Republican as any region in America.

As a consequence of my working there, I managed to make many acquaintances and friendships with those who happen to be Republicans. It makes sense, right? Of course it does!

My career ended in the summer of 2012, but my friendships with Republicans lives on. One of my best friends in my post-journalism years turned out to be the late Ernie Houdashell, the Randall County judge. He and I jousted frequently over Asian food about politics. He didn’t change my mind and I didn’t change his. However, I loved that man.

I came to know and respect many GOP politicians. They served in county offices; they were legislators; I came to know those who worked on the grassroots level, active in Potter and Randall County Republican politics. They are fine men and women.

I aim my anger at those who have perverted the Republican Party. The No. 1 GOP pervert, of course, happens to be the 45th POTUS. The New York attorney general today filed a lawsuit against the ex-POTUS and three of his adult children, alleging widespread fiscal fraud. The craven cultists’ reaction? They’re going to accuse AG Letitia James of all manner of misdeeds, malfeasance and mischief.

The perversion has spread throughout Congress, into statehouses, even into county courthouses, city halls and school board conference rooms. Those who continue to foment The Big Lie about the alleged “theft” of the 2020 presidential election will continue to receive my unadulterated scorn and rage.

So will those who continue to throw their blind loyalty to a crook, a liar and a self-aggrandizing narcissist who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them … but only about himself.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, legal news, national news, political news

How ‘Christian’ is this?

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Ron De Santis no doubt calls himself a devout Christian, not that I really care specifically about a politician’s religious affiliation.

It’s just “normal” for conservative Republican politicians, such as the Florida governor, to hoist a cloak of religious fervor to explain why they do certain things. In De Santis’ case, why he would take families — including babies — place them on an airplane and fly them to a mystery destination after they had entered the United States in search of a better life.

De Santis has been taking considerable joy in these actions against those entering this country while fleeing the communists in Venezuela and Nicaragua. He wants to make some sort of point about how Republicans are tougher on undocumented immigrants than Democrat.

I guess here is where I should mention that De Santis might run for president in 2024 and that his foe in two years could be Democratic President Joe Biden.

Devotion to one’s faith requires, it seems to me, that politicians adhere to all its teachings, not just cherry-pick those that suit the pols’ ambitions.

The Bible I read instructs me to show compassion and caring. Its New Testament teachings — you know, those that come from Jesus Christ — tell me to reach out in love to those in need. So help me, I cannot find a single passage that instructs me to hand those in need over to someone else.

Yet we have Ron De Santis and his GOP pal, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, shipping desperate human beings to points unknown and, in effect, telling them: Y’all are on your own. Good luck and we’ll see ya in funny papers.

Simply disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, media news, medical news, political news

Pandemic is not ‘over’

OK, Mr. President, I feel the need to set the record straight on something you reportedly blurted out on national TV the other evening.

You told “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley that the coronavirus pandemic “is over.” Uh, Mr. President? It’s not over! It’s still with us. Pharmaceutical companies are producing new vaccines and boosters. They’re making them available for schmucks like me to take … and I damn sure am going to receive my second booster shot in very short order.

What troubles me about your careless assertion that the pandemic is “over” is that it well might cause too many Americans to let down their guard.

I also heard what you told Pelley about how so many more millions of Americans are getting vaccinated than there were when you took office. I also heard how you said that the death toll has dropped off dramatically. That’s all true.

However, if the pandemic is “over,” why make such a big deal of having this vaccine booster available?

To be clear, I am not going to join the right-wing cabal of critics in suggesting that you’re “out of touch” or that you don’t have the intellectual heft to stay on the job as president. I am with you, Mr. President.

It’s just that your words carry tremendous weight. I mean, jeez, don’t say things that reverberate the way public pronouncements do. That reverberation is amplified when it involves statements that have killed nearly 1 million Americans and caused enormous anxiety among millions of other Americans.

Look, Mr. President, a member of my immediate family became sickened right after Christmas 2020. We could have lost her! We didn’t. However, she isn’t right just yet.

Others, too, are suffering recurrences of the disease.

Businesses are still “strongly encouraging” masks. Hospitals are offering free instant exams to patients checking in with unrelated emergencies.

Does that sound like a pandemic that has run its course?

It’s still with us, Mr. President.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news, political news

Statement causes chills

A declaration by a member of Congress didn’t receive nearly the attention it deserves; therefore, I will try to rectify it with this brief blog post.

U.S. Rep. What’s Her Name — aka Marjorie Taylor Greene — the Republican from Georgia, recently pronounced herself to be a “Christian nationalist.” I can’t recall the context of her comment or the venue in which she uttered it. All I can recall is her saying, “If you want to call me a Christian nationalist, then that’s what I am.”

That is a frightening thing to hear from a member of Congress.

I shall remind you once again that these individuals take an oath to “defend and protect the U.S. Constitution.” Indeed, I took such an oath in August 1968 when I was inducted into the U.S. Army, so I have some exposure to its meaning. I took it to mean, and I do so to this day, that I protect what the Constitution sets forth in its governing policy.

Rep. What’s Her Name needs to understand, too, what it means … but she ignores the obvious tenet of our nation’s government framework. It is that the Constitution establishes a secular government. It says in plain English in Article VI that there shall be “no religious test” required of anyone seeking public office.

The word “Christianity” is nowhere to be found in that document.

I know I have whipped this critter bloody already, but I will keep doing so until it sinks in. Christian nationalism seeks to turn the United States into a “Christian nation.” It isn’t. We are a nation with a population that comprises a strong majority of Christians as citizens. Our government was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and I am totally fine with that.

I am not fine with the notion that our Constitution somehow contains language that mandates our laws be faithful to New Testament scripture. So, for dipsh**s like Rep. What’s Her Name to suggest that it does reveals a remarkable level of ignorance about the very oath she took to uphold.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, local news, national news, political news, State news

Say it ain’t so, Ronny J!

Someone might have to pass some smelling salts to help revive me if what I read actually comes true.

It is that Rep. Ronny Jackson, the Amarillo Republican who’s curried favor with the Donald Trump cabal of kooks, might run for the U.S. Senate in 2026. Yep, the one-time White House doc might challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in four years presuming Cornyn decides to seek re-election.

That means if Jackson actually wins in 2026 then the whole state will have to endure his tweets, his ongoing assault against those who disagree with his MAGA-loving demagoguery.

The guy is a carpetbagging clown show barker who moved into the 13th Congressional District specifically to run for Congress from the Texas Panhandle.

Ronny Jackson, prominent Trump ally, weighing U.S. Senate run in 2026 | The Texas Tribune

Jackson is a Trumpkin through and through. He doesn’t deserve re-election to his House seat, let alone election to a seat in what once was known as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

Keep the salts handy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news, political news

If I were King of the World …

First, I need to stipulate that I never have aspired to be King of the World, but if somehow were it to happen, there are a few things I would change about the current political climate.

For starters:

  • I would limit the U.S. president to a single six-year term, kind of like what they do in Mexico. Presidents there run for a single term and then they’re gone.

What is the advantage here? The president doesn’t campaign for re-election, for starters, and he or she then gets to concentrate solely on legislative agendas.

Too often presidents take office at the start of their first term and begin making speeches aimed appealing to voting blocs that would favor them in a run for their second term. It’s a fairly bipartisan affliction, so my friends on the left can accuse me all they want of offering a “both sides do it” escape clause. Too bad. I just happen to believe it’s true.

I offer this change while reminding readers of this blog that I oppose term limits already. I subscribe to the notion that elections serve as “term limits” if voters believe the officeholder doesn’t deserve to be re-elected.

  • Furthermore, I would like to see terms of House members extended from two years to three or maybe four years. That, too, removes the need for House members to begin their re-election quest immediately upon taking office.

A congressman once told me that he had to dedicate a certain number of hours every week to campaign fundraising, which took time away from research and legislating. It was an unwritten rule, he said, but one that a congressman or woman dare not ignore if he or she wanted to serve beyond that single term.

I wouldn’t trifle with the length of U.S. Senate terms. No need to extend them beyond the six years to which we elect them. Besides, doing so might fill a senator with a notion that since he or she is elected to serve longer than the president that he or she is more important than the commander in chief. We’ve got too many senatorial grandstanders already.

None of this is likely to happen. I am just venting over what I see is serious damage to the political fabric.

Of course, none of this answers the need to stop elected certifiable dumbasses to high public office. We’ll have to deal seriously with that matter later.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, media news, national news, political news

Hey, Biden says ‘I intend’ to run

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(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

President Biden made some news tonight during his interview with CBS News’ Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes.”

The president kinda walked back his earlier statement in which he declared he would run for a second term in 2024. In the broadcast tonight, he said he “intends” to seek re-election but that a final decision hasn’t been made.

Hmm. Well, what does one say about that?

It tells me that Joe Biden is keeping his options as open as possible, given the topic that Pelley was discussing with the president.

His age. Biden is the oldest man ever to hold the office of POTUS. The president expressed supreme confidence in his ability to do the job. “Watch me,” he urged Pelley.

OK, I get it, Mr. President. I don’t have a personal issue with Biden walking back a bit his earlier declaration of a re-election effort. I think it’s smart for the president to say only what he intends to do.

A lot of things can happen. They do and this president, who’s been victimized by fate and tragedy in unimaginable ways, at this moment is no longer a declared candidate for president in 2024.

At least not yet.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news, economic news, local news, political news

It’s in the timing

Amarillo city officials are going on trial very soon in which they will have to defend the legitimacy of a multimillion-dollar effort to deliver a new municipal complex of offices and convention space.

The lawsuit comes from businessman Alex Fairly. The trial will be in a Potter County district court. Fairly believes the city acted illegally in issuing $260 million in “anticipation notes.”

I am not going to assess whether the city’s actions broke the law. I am, though, in a position to comment on the timing of the issuance.

You see, voters already had spoken decisively in November 2020 when they rejected a $275 million general obligation bond issue to — that’s right — revamp the Civic Center and relocate City Hall. The City Council didn’t seem to care about what voters decided.

So, it acted without voters’ approval by issuing those anticipation notes. The debt load carried by the notes is virtually identical to the load that voters rejected.

I hate saying this, because for years I was a staunch supporter of City Council initiatives, but the decision to supersede voters’ rejection smacks too much of municipal arrogance.

It’s the timing of the issuance juxtaposed with the rejection of the bond issue that ought to rankle residents. Fairly has intimated, further, that the issuance of the debt notes was done without adequate public notice, giving residents a chance to comment publicly on what they thought about the project.

To be sure, if I still lived in Amarillo and had a chance to vote on the bond issue in November 2020 I likely would have voted “yes” on the city request. I can argue all day and into the night about the need for the city to upgrade its Civic Center and find a new site for City Hall. Most voters, though, said “no” to the proposal.

For the city to then come back and issue the anticipation notes — which do not require voter approval — well, plays right into the righteous anger that fuels a lot of voters’ interest in government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, Donald Trump, national news, political news

Why are we waiting to indict?

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Donald Trump’s legal difficulties should not be seen as some sort of uniquely American experience.

Other nations’ former presidents have been arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prison for their crimes. How is it that Donald Trump so far has avoided being read his Miranda rights, forced to don the cuffs and marched off to the slammer?

I think it’s because we ourselves as a nation that treats defendants with dignity. We don’t rush to arrest someone formerly in power. We are an “indispensable nation” that values the “rule of law.”

It’s fair to ask whether Donald Trump would treat other defendants with dignity. Or would he lead campaign rally cheers to “lock him up”?

We all know the answer.

Still, I get the feeling that time is not necessarily Donald Trump’s friend.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Democrats playing with fire

I remain concerned, but not yet frightened, over the prospect of Democrats working overtly to help nominate MAGA-loving, election-denying, fruitcake Republicans to high public office.

It’s going on all across the country, with Democrats contributing actual cash money and casting actual votes for Republicans believing that nominating the weakest candidates guarantees a victory for Democrats this fall.

Not so fast, folks.

This is a game fraught with peril.

What in the world is going to happen if voters actually elect these election deniers to, say, governorships? There are individuals on some state ballots who promise to overturn the results of the 2024 presidential election if the “wrong” candidate wins. These are the folks Democrats are helping win their party’s nomination. Holy cow!

This kind of electoral tomfoolery can work. It also can backfire.

It’s the kind of act that makes me nervous.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com