Category Archives: political news

Why the hysterical response?

Am I imagining it or is the right-wing cabal of alleged political thinkers acting as if the president of the United States might have hit ’em where they hurt?

President Biden took some national TV time the other evening to blame the “MAGA Republicans” who comprise a shrinking but still significant portion of a once-grand old party for stealing the “soul of the nation.” He also called them a threat to democracy because of their constant threats of violence and their insistence that the 2020 presidential election was the result of “widespread voter fraud.”

The right-wingers have fired back with both barrels. They accuse Biden of inciting division himself. They call him the worst president in history. They excoriate him for offending “half the country” that still supports Donald Trump; actually, it ain’t half, but instead is a significant — but dwindling — minority of Americans who still swallow the swill that Trump is serving.

The hysterical response suggests to me that President Biden has told ’em the truth. Or, as President “Give “em Hell Harry” Truman might say, “He told them the truth and they just think it’s hell.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ginni Thomas: dangerous conspirator

Ginni Thomas just keeps distinguishing herself in ways that ought to bring shame not just to her but to her husband … who happens to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thanks to some intrepid reporting from the Washington Post, we now hear that Ginni Thomas urged Wisconsin Republicans to do all they could to overturn the results of that state’s 2020 presidential election. She wanted them to flip the results from Joe Biden’s column to Donald Trump.

Why is this important? Because … hubby Clarence Thomas continues to rule on cases involving that election, rather than (a) recuse himself from anything having to do with that event or (b) just resigning from the high court altogether, which is my preferred outcome.

It is an utterly disgraceful display of conflict of interest for Justice Thomas to continue ruling on these matters while his wife continues to roil the faithful with idiotic assertions that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

This matter is so far from being over.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

MAGAites churn my stomach

Reaction to President Biden’s speech in defense of the “soul of America” from the MAGA cabal of kooks has been, to say the least, more than a bit unsettling.

The treasonous cultists who adhere to the phony philosophy that seeks to Make America Great Again now are ascribing to President Biden the very characteristics we all have seen exhibited in real time by Donald J. Trump.

They are pissed off because they allege Biden has declared war on “half the country.” How do I say this clearly? No, he is not! Biden has sought to wage rhetorical warfare against a shrinking element of the MAGA base that continues to buy into The Big Lie about alleged widespread voter fraud … that does not exist.

Think for a moment about the cultists who buy into one thing their “esteemed leader” said this week: Trump said that if hell freezes over and he is returned as president that he will give “serious thought” to issuing blanket pardons for those who took part in the 1/6 attack on our government. (Actually, the “hell freezes over” reference is mine, not Trump’s … as if you didn’t know.)

My point is that nothing makes my blood boil more at this moment than the notion of the traitorous mob being pardoned for their assault on our democratic process, when they smashed through windows, threatened to “Hang Mike Pence!” and crapped on the floor of our Capitol Building.

Biden made several points with crystal clarity. The one that stands out for me was when he declared that you “cannot support our democracy only when you win.” 

The Big Lie believers cannot accept that the Big Liar in Chief lost the 2020 election. Nor can they accept the righteous and deserved scolding they received from the man who defeated their cult hero.

Yes, they pose a threat to our democracy. The rest of us must — and I use this term metaphorically — put them down.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The docs ain’t yours, Donald

Donald J. Trump had this annoying habit during his time as president of referring to the Cabinet, the official White House staff, even the Joint Chiefs of Staff as his own.

Recall how he would refer to “my attorney general,” or “my generals” or “my presidency.”

Now comes word that the former POTUS has referred to the classified documents he took from the White House as “my documents.” How they “belong to me.

Uhh, no, Donald. They belong to me and all other Americans. The president with no knowledge of the Constitutional or the limits it places on the presidency has seized those documents and claimed them for his own use. That’s what the evidence so far has been revealing.

To be fair, Trump isn’t the only POTUS to take such ownership of public figures, public documents and public offices. I have lost count of the number of presidents refer to “my presidency,” or “my vice president” or “my national security team.” I seek while writing on this blog to avoid ascribing ownership of the presidency to the individual who occupies the office.

That said, Trump’s claim of ownership of top-secret and other classified papers sends chills up my back.

Listen up, Attorney General Merrick Garland: The man has to pay for such hubris.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Democrats get big gust of wind from the Arctic

Whoever in the world would have thought that Democrats — already feeling energized as the midterm election approaches — would get a big gust of wind in their sails … from the Arctic Circle?

Yep, that is where a Democratic candidate for Congress scored an upset over a one-time Republican darling, former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP’s 2008 nominee for vice president of the United States.

Mary Peltola will take her seat in the House, succeeding the late Don Young in the state’s only U.S. House seat. Palin was thought to be a shoo-in for the post. Then they counted the votes and it turns out that Peltola got more of them than the former Sarah Barracuda.

What’s most astonishing is that Peltola becomes the first Democrat to serve in the House from Alaska since the beginning of Alaska’s statehood. Alaska is as reliably Republican as any state in the Union.

And to be brutally candid, it’s good to see Palin knocked down a peg or three from her imagined towering perch.

Palin became a sort of caricature of herself over the years, with her assorted high-profile family issues erupting here and there. She quit the governorship halfway through her first and only term in office.

I’ve always thought of Palin as an empty vessel, someone with hardly an original idea in her noggin. That the late Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee in 2008, would choose her as his running mate turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of McCain’s long and distinguished career in public service.

Peltola now must go through a general election campaign, having knocked Palin out of the race. May the new congresswoman serve her state well. I have this feeling she’ll do so with the dignity that Palin usually was unable to find.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

‘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

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

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

Last hurrah for Beto?

Oh, brother, I hate thinking about this, but I just have to get something off my chest.

It is that those of us who want to see Texas Democrats break the stranglehold that Texas Republicans have clamped on the roster of statewide public office might have to start looking for even fresher faces to carry their message forward.

I am thinking specifically of Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor. This might be the last hurrah for Beto.

I keep reading information about polling that puts Gov. Greg Abbott out front by around 7 to 9 percentage points, which is beyond the margin of error built into these polling surveys. It just feels to me that Beto is running out of steam.

He already came close to defeating Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. He got many Texans’ hearts fluttering when he came within 3 percentage points of defeating Cruz. Then he ran for president of the United States in 2020; his candidacy never grew wings.

Now he’s making the case yet again for governor. He has been handed tremendous issues on which to campaign: Abbott’s horrible handling of the border crisis; his mishandling of his response to the Uvalde school massacre; Abbott’s fixation with blaming President Biden over every issue that flashes in front of his mug.

They don’t seem to be sticking to Abbott. At least not according to the public opinion polling.

Look, I want O’Rourke to win. I am doing everything within my limited ability to make it happen. Hey, lightning could strike! There might be something of a political miracle in the making that escapes my attention.

But if not … well, I believe it might be time for Beto to call it good and leave the fight for someone else.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Do as I say, not do …

This is the opening paragraph of a story published today by the Texas Tribune …

Monica De La Cruz, a firebrand Republican running in a fiercely competitive South Texas race, received thousands of dollars for personal business interests from federal COVID relief programs despite disparaging federal assistance programs as harmful to the U.S. economy.

Man, you just have to love the kind of reporting that exposes politicians’ hypocrisy in this Age of Hypocrites.

Here’s the rest of the story. Take a peek. It’s worth your time.

Monica De La Cruz cashes in on COVID aid, trashes programs | The Texas Tribune

The Tribune points out that De La Cruz is the latest Republican — yeah, this is mostly a GOP affliction — to criticize Democrats’ policies while scarfing up the goodies for their own gain.

So it is with this GOP candidate for Congress.

Do you recall in 2020 when Republicans railed against President Biden’s efforts to pump money into repairing and upgrading our infrastructure? Then, once Congress approved it Biden signed it into law, they stood up and boasted about all the money that was coming to their states and congressional districts.

The Tribune reported further about De La Cruz’s duplicity: “Monica De La Cruz raged against relief funding for Texas small businesses, but what she didn’t mention was that she and her family happily took nearly $200,000 of that same aid for themselves. Her hypocritical agenda of ‘Help for me, but not for thee’ is politics at its worst and South Texans deserve better,” said Monica Robinson, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Where I come from, such blatant hypocrisy is a deal-breaker.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com