Monthly Archives: December 2020

national news

Deal arrives … finally!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Call me a cynic or just plain pi**ed off at Congress and most certainly at the current president of the United States.

If members of the House and Senate are expecting any back-slapping or high-fiving from me on the deal they have struck to provide pandemic relief while keeping the government operating, well … they won’t get it.

Congressional leaders have cobbled together a $900 billion pandemic relief package as part of a $1.4 trillion government funding bill that keeps the government running until October. Fine. Thanks, ladies and gentlemen.

I am still amazed, though, at the drama, the theatrics, the posturing and name-calling that preceded this deal. We had Republican senators blocking measures that would have provided $1,200 relief payments. Why block it? They were concerned — and this is really rich — the impact on the federal debt!

What a crock of horse dookey! Senators and House members, namely Republicans, didn’t give a crap about the debt when they enacted enormous tax cuts for rich folks. Now they have found deficit/debt religion? Give me a break!

What’s more, they have subjected many millions of Americans to unnecessary anxiety while they await some form of help from their government, the one populated by officials who take an oath to serve you and me.

I am glad they found a way to get ‘er done. I am not going to sing praises to the nimrods on Capitol Hill or the dips*** who lives — for the time being — in the White House.

This is no way to run a government.

I am going to make a request of the new guy who’s moving into the White House on Jan. 20.

Uh, President Biden? Please clunk some Democratic and Republican heads together when you get settled in and start searching for ways to provide long-term solutions to our on-going crisis in paying for our government.

I am sick and tired of wondering whether my government will remain open when our legislators and the president cannot arrive at a timely solution to crises.

national news

Biden’s Senate knowledge will serve us well

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Joe Biden’s lengthy government service and experience are well-known to us all.

I happen to believe that the experience Biden brings to the presidency well might be the greatest asset he can deploy as he tries to repair the damage that Donald Trump has done to the institutions of government.

The president-elect spent 36 years in the Senate before being elected vice president in 2008. During his decades on Capitol Hill and in the White House, Biden developed a reputation as someone with extraordinary bipartisan relationships. He got along well with Republicans as well as with Democrats.

That government experience stands as a major selling point for electing him president over an incumbent who came to government via the business world and who never grasped the complexities of the federal government machinery.

Biden does not need any schooling on how the system works.

He will inherit a government in trouble. The nation is in trouble. We are battling a killer pandemic, which has caused an economic collapse the likes of which none of us has seen. The president is required at this juncture to be able to juggle many balls at once. Biden appears well-equipped — along with the team he is assembling — of doing what needs to be done.

Will it work? Will the policies he intends to implement do the job? That remains an open question.

However, I intend to place a good measure of faith in the ability of the new president to look for the right buttons to push.

national news

POTUS-elect: better man than most

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Biden is a far better man than I am.

Someone shoved a microphone in his face the other day to ask him to react to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s belated recognition that Biden, indeed, is the president-elect.

Biden’s response caught me by surprise. He said he had spoken with the Senate majority leader and thanked him for his congratulations … and then pledged to work closely with him on areas where the two men can find agreement.

What might my reaction be? It wouldn’t be nearly as magnanimous. For that matter, Donald Trump damn sure wouldn’t have been as gracious had he been the target of the well-chronicled suspicion that GOP politicians have leveled at the Democratic president-elect.

McConnell stood behind some phony excuse about letting the “process play out” before recognizing the obvious, which is that Joe Biden defeated Trump in the Nov. 3 election. After the Electoral College certified Biden’s win, only then did McConnell speak from the Senate floor to congratulate the president-elect.

Fiddlesticks, man!

national news

Are we better off? Umm, no!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ronald Reagan once asked famously during a 1980 presidential debate with President Carter whether the nation was “better off than we were four years ago.”

The question seared the audience that heard him ask it. Voters responded on Election Day 1980 with a stunning verdict: The answer was “no,” and they delivered a landslide victory to Reagan.

Rahm Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor and an acknowledged Democratic partisan, asked  that question today in terms of Donald Trump’s tenure as president. The answer, according to Emanuel, is an equally resounding “no.”

Therein lies the reason why Trump lost his bid for a second term, just as President Carter lost his own second-term run 40 years ago. The nation is fundamentally worse off today than we were when Trump took office.

Trump has presided over a horrendous coarsening of our national debate; he has inflicted heavy damage on our international alliances; Trump has governed by chaos and tossed continuity into the crapper; the POTUS has made full-throated lying an acceptable form of communication … and we have the pandemic.

I will not blame Trump for the virus that has killed more than 300,000 Americans. I do blame him fully for the shabby, shoddy and shameful response he has orchestrated. He lied to us about its severity from the get-go; he has contradicted the advice of his medical experts; Trump has put Americans at grave risk of death as a result.

The pandemic is an existential threat to our national security and Donald Trump has failed to remain faithful to the oath he took when he became president.

Have there been successes along the way? Sure. Israel’s relationships in the Middle East with neighboring Arab nations gives us hope for a more lasting peace in that region; prior to the pandemic’s arrival a year ago, our economy was experiencing significant growth. I will not short-sell those positive outcomes.

The pandemic and all the other failures, though, have left us worse off today than we were when Donald Trump took office and delivered an inaugural address that produced precisely one memorable moment: that “the American carnage” would come to an immediate end. Well, guess what. It hasn’t ended.

President-elect Biden has a monumental task awaiting him when he takes office in 31 days. Just as Americans spoke decisively 40 years when we elected President Reagan — who posed what has become the threshold question for all politicians — we have spoken yet again in electing President Biden.

national news

Guardians? Really?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This will take some time to register with me.

Vice President Mike Pence has announced that members of the newly created U.S. Space Force will be called “guardians.”

That’s right. They will be called guardians the way the Army refers to soldiers, the Navy has its sailors, the Air Force has airmen, the Marines have, um, Marines and the Coast Guard has Coast Guardsmen.

The Space Force deploys guardians to defend us against … what? Extraterrestrials such as Martians or the Man in the Moon?

As Politico reports: “It is my honor on behalf of the president of the United States to announce that henceforth the men and women of the United States Space Force will be known as guardians,” Pence told an audience at the White House.

Look, I wasn’t high on the formation of a Space Force anyway. The Air Force already has a Space Command and was doing a stellar job of protecting us from missiles launched by hostile nations, let alone invaders from deep space.

I’m waiting for the first president of the United States say during a speech how he or she will honor the service of our “soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and guardians.” 

environmental news

Hoping for more than climate change lip service

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Joe Biden is giving an abundance of lip service to climate change, global warming, clean energy development as he continues to formulate an executive government.

He did so yet again today in revealing his choices to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department and the Energy Department.

Look, I believe the president-elect is sincere in his state desire to tackle what he has called the greatest “existential threat” to our national security. I agree with him. However, I intend to watch intently as the new president starts rolling out the policies that will put some meat on the rhetorical bones that President-elect Biden is delivering on the climate change issue.

I want to see investments made in clean energy development. Energy Secretary-designate Jennifer Granholm spoke to that desire when she spoke to us after Biden introduced her. Indeed, the POTUS-elect has talked about climate change initiatives as being job creators. He has said he wants to employ millions of Americans in clean energy development.

Climate change and global warming do present a grave threat to the nation. The gloom-and-doomers among us suggest it might be too late for humankind to stem the effects of our changing climate. I am not going to buy into that notion.

I want my government and the president I supported with my vote to contribute more than lip service. We need federal policies that will help us harvest the wind, the ocean tides and other clean renewable energy sources to do the job upon which we continue to rely on fossil fuels.

Those fossil fuels have their limits. They also are contributing to that existential threat that our new president says is endangering our planet.

Mr. President-elect, it’s time to get busy. As in immediately.

media news

Social media reveal true friends

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It didn’t take me long to become swallowed up by the social media culture that seems so prevalent.

I am attached to many social media platforms, most of which I use primarily to circulate this blog. Facebook remains my No. 1 social media platform and I appreciate very much the attention that the outlet provides this blog of mine.

Social media, though, do have plenty of downsides. They become primary conveyers of falsehoods, conspiracy theories … those kinds of things. They also reveal to me who out there are our friends.

Here is where I want to make an admission. I have valued many friendships with individuals of varying political persuasions. Then came social media and and I admit to losing some of those friends because of our varying, um, political leanings. Dang, that just makes me want to spit … you know?

I am not proud to acknowledge that the end of those relationships means I’ve been suckered into placing far more value in them than the other party. One of them recently severed a social media relationship after being an actual friend for more than 30 years. He never told me why he was cutting me loose; he just did it. I am left to presume it was our different world views, as we had jousted in recent years about political matters.

Whatever. It’s done. I will continue to use social media to distribute this blog. I enjoy using the various media platforms. I reckon I need to view the relationships I have with others in a more critical light and avoid overvaluing them.

I’m a grownup. I know how these matters play out.

national news

Biden lines up many ‘firsts’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Joe Biden keeps rolling out the executive branch lineup he wants to help him govern the nation he was elected to lead. In the main, I find his selections so far to be an impressive collection of folks.

Biden keeps touting all the “firsts” he is asking to serve with him. The first openly gay Cabinet official; the first women to lead the energy and treasury departments; the first Native-American in the Cabinet; the first African-American to run the Pentagon and the Environmental Protection Agency.

He says he wants the executive branch of government to mirror the nation. It looks as though the president-elect is fulfilling that goal.

One of the remarkable aspects of the government he is forming is the number of individuals who struggled as they came of age, found their way into the world. The new interior secretary-designate talked of being homeless as a girl; the new energy secretary nominee told of her grandfather taking his own life because he couldn’t struggle with poverty.

Sure, there are marvelous success stories in the group. There appears to be a marked absence of billionaires of the type that populated the Cabinet that Donald Trump put together when he assumed office four years ago.

The new government in the making is a diverse group, comprising plenty of ethnic and racial minorities, women and men of various backgrounds. Many of them come to the new government with plenty of prior government experience.

Yes, we see a number of hands brought back from President Obama’s two terms in office. The new veterans affairs secretary served as White House chief of staff, the treasury secretary designate led the Fed during the Obama years, the White House chief of staff once filled a similar role for the VP during the Obama years and the climate envoy once served as secretary of state during the Obama administration.

I want to give Joe Biden a bit of credit for bringing back some tried-and-true government hands who played a role in governing during the successful two terms of the Obama administration. Indeed, the president-elect himself is a creature of the government he is now going to lead, serving 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president. For that matter, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris served in the U.S. Senate, was attorney general of California and was district attorney in San Francisco County; she, too, is fluent in government-speak and one cannot overstate the value knowing the language.

Americans took a gamble in electing a business mogul as president four years ago. To my way of thinking, it didn’t work out, given Donald Trump’s ignorance of how government works and his unwillingness to learn how to operate its intricate mechanism.

The nation will not have to face that particular issue when Joe Biden takes office as president.

So it is that the new president is crafting a government that resembles the nation. Moreover, it will be populated by those who know how it works, which in itself isn’t a “first.” It merely feels fresh compared to the chaos we have seen during the past four years.

International news

32 days to go … hurry up!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It might be the longest 32 days in memory, but there’s an end to the madness we are experiencing at this moment.

Donald Trump has downplayed what the intelligence community and even our secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have said about the attack on our national security system. Pompeo and the spooks say that Russia is behind the hacking into our system; Trump said it might be China and said the matter is “under control.”

Uh huh. And the pandemic was “under control” in March when Trump was downplaying the COVID virus that has killed, oh, about 314,000 Americans.

Trump had been silent on the Russian attack until today. Then he took to Twitter to say the consequence of the Russian hacking is being hyped up by the “lamestream media,” the “fake news” purveyors.

Shut the hell up, Mr. POTUS! You are a disgrace to the office, to the nation. When I am willing to take the word of your boy, Mike Pompeo, over you … well, then the sun might rise in the west tomorrow morning.

“This was a very significant effort, and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity,” Pompeo told radio talk show host Mark Levin.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to give his pals in the Kremlin a pass. Oh, my. May the next 32 days zoom past us so we can welcome a president of the United States who will cease making excuses for a hostile foreign nation.

national news

Anxious to bid farewell to miserable year

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If we’re honest with ourselves and our deepest feelings, we are going to admit that the year that is about to pass into history cannot exit soon enough.

By almost any measure, 2020 has been the uber-pits. It has sucked out loud. We have endured more misery, heartache, grief than in any 12-month period since, oh, possibly forever.

OK, I get that history tells us a different story. The years of the Civil War were hideous in the extreme. World Wars I and II brought a lot of tears to families of service personnel who died in the struggle against tyranny. The Great Depression that occurred between those conflicts created plenty of grief as well. Let us not forget 1968 with its political assassinations and the anger over an unpopular war that spilled into our streets.

This one, though, has so damn few redeeming qualities … except for one, which I will touch on in a moment.

The pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions around the world. Our national government has failed to protect us against the killer virus and we all hold the person at the top of that chain of command ultimately responsible for the failings.

Our daily routines have been upended. Our children have watched their parents struggle with disease. Yes, the measuring stick we use to gauge the quality of the year we are about to usher out the door is full of too much negativity.

There is hope on the horizon. The vaccines that drug companies have perfected are being fast-tracked onto the market. Two of them have received federal emergency authorization and are being injected into Americans’ arms as I type these words. We mustn’t let our guard down. It will take time for the medicine to kick the crap out of the virus.

And we did elect a new president of the United States in 2020. I am grateful for that outcome. If only that act of democratic wisdom, though, could erase the suffering that preceded it. Sadly, it doesn’t — at least in my view.

I am going to say so long and good riddance to the old year. May we never see its like again.