Monthly Archives: December 2020

national news

Biden lead piles up

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Not that anyone is keeping score — other than me — but here’s a bit of election trivia for you to ponder.

President-elect Biden’s actual vote margin over Donald Trump has surpassed 7 million ballots, making this the most decisive election victory since 2008, when Barack Obama defeated the late John McCain by nearly 10 million votes.

I understand a couple of realities about this vote margin. One is that it doesn’t matter about who gets elected, since the Electoral College makes that call. Oh, wait! President-elect Biden has 306 electoral votes; he only needed 270 to win the presidency.

Four years ago, Trump rolled up the same number of electoral votes that Biden did and he called his win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 a “landslide.” This time he alleges Biden’s win is the result of a “rigged election.” What utter horsesh**!

Sigh! Trump went to Georgia tonight to keep making his contemptuous complaint about fraud and other other idiocy about how he “won” the Georgia vote.

Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (uselectionatlas.org)

The other reality is that of the 7 million vote majority that Trump rang up, more than 5 million ballots came from California. Still, let’s remember that this was a national election. Still, let’s be prepared to hear the claptrap from the Trumpster toadies that will seek to denigrate the scope of Joe Biden’s victory.

Trump lost the election … bigly.

national news

DACA recipients get a boost from judge

(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)exe

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents have gotten a welcome boost from a federal judge who has informed the Homeland Security department to start accepting applications to become involved in a program established during the Obama administration.

These residents are those who came here illegally as children, brought to the United States by their parents. They’re called “Dreamers,” and the Obama administration shielded them from deportation through the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals act. President Obama established DACA by executive order; Donald Trump rescinded that order, seeking to end the DACA initiative.

Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis’ ruling restores DACA for those Dreamers, giving them a chance to seek citizenship or legal resident status.

Indeed, as I’ve noted already on this blog, DACA recipients need some compassion from the U.S. government. Many of them came here as children, some as toddlers or infants. They know no other country than the United States. They have no connection to their country of birth. The Trump administration sought to round them up and send them packing to their birth country, which to my way of thinking is absolutely cruel in the extreme.

President-elect Biden is vowing immigration reform legislation in his first 100 days in office. It must include a permanent restoration of DACA for those who are willing to do what they must to become citizens or legal residents.

They have been given another reprieve from a federal judge to start that process once again.

As CNN.com reported: “Immigrant youth have resisted this cruel administration’s continuous attacks, and once more we have won,” said Johana Larios. “Now, first-time applicants like me will be able to have access to the DACA program and current recipients will be able to breathe a little easier as DACA is restored to its original form. I am now able to look forward to returning to school, and feel safe that I won’t be separated from my community.”

I am hoping for a return to humane immigration policies.

legal news, national news

Replace ‘defund’ with ‘reform’ the police

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I didn’t come up with this theory, but I am going to endorse it.

It goes like this: Democrats didn’t do as well on down-ballot races during the 2020 election because voters might have been alarmed at the slogan “defund the police” that many progressive candidates appeared to support.

Republicans chipped away at Democrats’ majority in the U.S. House and they well might maintain their slim majority in the U.S. Senate if Democrats fail to capture two seats in the Georgia runoff election set for next month.

What was the trigger? Protests erupted around the nation after the hideous death of George Floyd by Minneapolis cops. One of them is charged with murder in Floyd’s death. The protests declared it was time to “defund the police” in communities around the nation.

I am quite unsettled by that notion. I realize now that “defunding” police departments really didn’t mean disbanding municipal or county police agencies. Efforts took root in many cities to re-allocate police money to community services.

I am much more comfortable with the idea that we need to “reform” police practices in many communities, make the cops more sensitive to how others perceive them when they arrest minority residents and how they treat them once they are in custody.

Former President Barack Obama, who has re-entered the political arena with his full-throated support of President-elect Biden, spoke to this police issue the other day. He expressed concern about the “defund” slogan and whether too many Americans took it literally.

Communities need police protection the way they need fire protection, or water service, or having their garbage picked up. I am unaware of any serious American who favors lawlessness on our streets.

Am I frightened by the conduct of officers who react as those cops did in Minneapolis when George Floyd was killed seemingly because he was a black man who committed a misdemeanor offense? Absolutely, I am! I also am frightened by other reports in other communities of police officers shooting African-Americans who weren’t resisting arrest, or were running away from officers.

Defunding police departments, though, is not the answer … even in the form it is actually taking. We should change the discussion topic to “reform the police,” which is where I hope President Biden can take this discussion as we move it forward.

medical news

Yes, to Dr. Fauci staying on the job

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Imagine that you’re the nation’s — if not the world’s — leading infectious disease doctor and you’ve been “advising” a president of the United States who dismisses your advice and calls you an “idiot.”

Then the president loses his re-election effort and you get a call from the fellow who beat him, the guy who pledged throughout his successful campaign that he would “rely on the science” to help set a course to battle a killer pandemic. He new president wants to you stay on as his “chief science adviser.”

What do you do? Well, you do what Dr. Anthony Fauci did when President-elect Joe Biden asked him to stay on. You say “yes” on the spot, which the president-elect said was Dr. Fauci’s response.

Uh, Mr. President-elect, you can count me as one American who is glad to know that you’re going to keep Anthony Fauci nearby to offer his best, learned advice on how to handle this pandemic. Joe Biden will become the eighth president for whom Fauci has worked.

All of them, Democrat and Republican alike — except for Donald J. Trump — have heeded his advice and plotted courses of action to battle prior medical emergencies based on what he has told them.

As for The Donald, his description of the Ivy League-educated physician and scientist as an “idiot” tells me all I need to know about the numbskull approach Trump has taken to the pandemic response.

national news

Now it’s the AG in the crosshairs?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Listen to the chatter out there.

We hear now that Donald Trump is mad as hell at U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Why? Well … because Barr — who’s been Trump’s water boy for the length of his tenure as AG — has decided to, um, tell the truth about Trump’s assertion of “widespread voter fraud” in the 2020 election.

Barr said he can find no evidence of such fraud. Nothing to affect the outcome of the election. Not even a little bit of fraud. Yes, the Justice Department probe into Trump’s wild accusations have revealed that they are, uh, just wild accusations.

Trump won’t rule out firing Barr just 46 days until the end of his administration. Hmm. I wish I could say it matters now. It doesn’t. Barr has done enough damage to the rule of law already, such as when he misrepresented former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia collusion investigation he conducted prior to Donald Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives. Remember that one? It forced Mueller to issue a statement rebuking Barr’s false narrative of what the report contained.

At this point, it doesn’t matter. Other than firing Barr would reveal the depths of Donald Trump’s narcissism.

Hurry up, Jan. 20. The nation awaits a new president who can restore dignity to this office.

national news

Trump behavior … would we allow our kids to do this?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s relentless petulance in the wake of his smashing re-election loss as president of the United States brings to mind what we have taught our children.

We teach  them to accept losses with a modicum of dignity and humility. We don’t want them to gloat when they win; nor do we want them to pout when they lose. Society has winners and losers. You win some, you lose some.

When you lose you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, congratulate the person who beat you and then you move on. When we played Little League baseball, we all cheered our opponent in victory and defeat with that quaint cheer when we yelled, “Two, four, six, eight … who do we appreciate?”

Donald Trump has become the Sore Loser in Chief, the antithesis of what we have taught our children, what our own parents have taught us. I have no clue how it was in the Trump household when young Donald was a boy. For all I know he is behaving today precisely the way he was taught to behave by his mother and father.

Which makes me think his folks would be proud of the way he has been undermining the democratic process. How he has endangered us by holding up the transition to a new administration and denying the president-elect access to the intelligence briefings he needs to establish a strategy for protecting Americans.

Well, the good news is out there just ahead of us. It will arrive in about, oh, 46 days when President Joe Biden takes the oath and restores adult behavior to the West Wing of the White House.

national news

At least someone is talking about the pandemic

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I get that Joe Biden isn’t president of the United States just yet.

He insists that he knows we have only one president at a time. Indeed, we do. However, I am glad as the dickens that at least one leading political figure — that would be the president-elect — is talking to us candidly and openly and truthfully about the pandemic that continues to rage out of control.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris sat down for their first post-election interview together with CNN anchor Jake Tapper. They spoke on a day when we set yet another hideous record for hospitalization and deaths from the pandemic.

Biden pledged that upon taking office he will issue an order declaring that anyone doing business or working on federal property will wear masks and will maintain social distancing.

Got that? Then he asked all Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of the Biden administration. The president-elect believes that if all Americans don masks and stay way from each other we will see a “dramatic decrease” in the infection rate. Well, I am going to heed his advice … we’ll just have to see how it plays out.

Back to my point, which is that the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, hasn’t seen fit to talk at all about the pandemic. Since he lost re-election on Nov 3, Trump has been preoccupied with sowing distrust in our electoral system. He won’t concede that Biden whipped his a** in the election.

Trump should be talking, too, about the pandemic. He should be meeting weekly, if not daily, with his White House pandemic response team that has been rendered virtually useless as Trump pouts over losing an election. Speaking of the response team, what in the world has become of Vice President Mike Pence, the man who is supposed to be in charge of that effort? He is MIA along with the president.

I am grateful beyond measure that the election turned out as it did. As everyone knows — and I have been willing to acknowledge — elections have consequences.

We are witnessing one of those consequences play out in real time as the president-elect steps into the breech that the current president has abandoned.

national news

Biden, Harris set a refreshing pace

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I just watched our new president and vice president on TV, interviewed together for the first time since the election.

My first  reaction? What a remarkable change from what we have endured for the past four years!

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris spoke candidly, openly and thoroughly with CNN’s Jake Tapper, who I should add did not lob only softball questions at them. They spoke clearly and cleanly about whether they would allow family members to stay involved in business interests that could conflict with their roles as president and VP; they both said “no.”

And so … we are heading toward a return to the norms of the nation’s highest offices that Donald Trump has trashed.

I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to when President Biden and Vice President Harris take their oaths of office.

I no longer want to see public policy dished out via Twitter; Biden says it won’t happen. Nor do I want to see the president bullying and pressuring the attorney general to investigate so-and-so for such-and-such; Biden says that won’t happen, either. I yearn for a return to this nation as a world leader among the nations of the world; Biden and Harris said the United States will restore our alliances.

I want the president and vice president to lead our fight against the COVID pandemic by demonstrating they, too, will wear masks and practice social distancing. President-elect Biden said he will issue a direct order as president that anyone doing business in federal buildings will be wearing masks and staying apart from each other; moreover, he pledged tonight to ask all Americans to mask up for the first 100 days of the Biden administration.

Biden believes nationwide mask-wearing will help reduce the rate of infection, illness and death. If he wants us to wear a mask, then I am going to do as he asks.

Yes, the nation is about to leave the age of chaos and confusion on the side of the road. I like what I heard tonight from the new team.

national news

GOP wants to win by ‘not voting’?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

OK, how am I supposed to process this bit of idiocy?

Republicans want to hold onto their fragile U.S. Senate majority. Two GOP senators from Georgia — David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler — are engaging in runoffs set for Jan. 5. Perdue is running against Jon Ossoff; Loeffler is facing off against the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock.

What does the nation’s top Republican, Donald Trump, want Georgia voters to do? He wants them to boycott an election he says is “rigged.” Yes. That’s how he wants the Senate Republicans to retain their majority. Just stay home because you don’t want to participate in a “rigged election,” says Trump in an impassioned message to Georgia voters.

By all means, Georgia Republicans, don’t vote. Ossoff and Warnock can win, giving Democrats a 50-50 tie in the Senate, which means Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris could break ties votes.

Yep, Donald Trump is pitching an idiotic strategy.

State news

Hey, Lt. Gov. Patrick … have you awarded any dough?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, one of the charter members of the state’s Republican Party loony bin brigade, recently offered a reward for anyone who could produce evidence of vote fraud in Texas.

From what I have been able to gather, he hasn’t had to pay up.

Imagine that, eh? Why do you suppose Patrick has gone silent? I reckon it’s because no one has come forward with evidence of fraud. Not even a little bit of it, let alone “widespread voter fraud” of the type that Donald J. Trump keeps yapping about.

Texas registered a tremendous voter turnout in this year’s presidential election, with more than 11 million of us casting ballots. Trump carried the state by less than 6 percent. In Collin County, where I live — a county known for its rock-ribbed Republican standing — Trump won by just 4.4 percent.

The election was conducted with the usual professionalism that counties across the state perform.

Yet there was Lt. Gov. Patrick making a big show out of the most hideous non-story of this entire election cycle. He dangled money in front of Texans seeking to lure someone to come forward with evidence of vote fraud.

This is all part of the same sham and scam that Trump is unloading on the national democratic process. It’s the stuff of idiots, conspiracy theorists, dimwits, dipsh**s and certifiable loons.

Dan Patrick can rest easy now. He won’t have to pay anyone a nickel.