Monthly Archives: February 2021

local news, medical news

Proud of this decision

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Forgive the boastfulness of this post … but I just gotta share it.

Forty-one years ago I made one of the more profound decisions of my life. It doesn’t rank with marrying my wife, which resulted in the family we produced together. But it’s a biggie.

I quit smoking cold turkey. The decision came actually on Feb. 2, 1980, a date which I marked silently a couple of days ago.

Smoking had placed my health in jeopardy. I had developed a “smoker’s cough,” which isn’t surprising in that I was incinerating two packs of smokes each day.

I awoke on Feb. 2, 1980, lit up cigarette, took a drag on it and choked. I had been suffering a cold, with a sore throat, snotty nose and a cough.

I crumpled up the cigarette and the pack from which I took it. Tossed it all in the trash. And never looked back.

It turned out over time that quitting cold turkey was easier than I thought. I had tried to quit before. I would go a few weeks, or months, without lighting up. Then something would happen. I would stress out. Gotta have a cigarette! So then I would fire one up. That did it.

Not this time! I quit cold turkey and learned a lesson that I share with others who tell me they are “thinking about quitting.” 

It is this: Do not “think” about quitting. Just do it. Now! Do not wait until the weekend, or when you finish the pack you’re smoking, or after your next meal. Just quit!

Take my word for this bit of reality: If shedding a nasty habit in that manner can pay off for someone like me — an individual who has abandoned countless unfinished tasks along my life journey — then anyone can do it.

national news

Wrong audience, Rep. Greene

Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter 

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well now … that is nice. I guess.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — the QAnon queen of the House of Representatives — met with her Republican colleagues behind closed doors.

She reportedly offered an apology to her colleagues. We don’t know what she said because it was done behind closed (and presumably locked) doors. Then, when she finished, she got a standing ovation — again, reportedly — from roughly half of those in the room.

I do not accept her apology. Because she made it to the wrong audience.

Rep. Greene needs to apologize to the parents of the first- and second-graders who were slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary School; she called their murder a hoax.

She needs to apologize to the survivors and the loved ones of the Parkland, Fla., who died in another horrible school massacre. She has said that event also was made up

Greene needs to apologize to the family members, friends and assorted loved ones of those who died in the Pentagon on 9/11. She has declared that the Pentagon never was hit because there is “no evidence” of a plane flying into the office building.

Rep. Greene needs to apologize to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in person, for declaring her desire to see the speaker “executed” for committing an act of treason.

Finally, Greene needs to apologize to the rest of us out here who are utterly appalled that a member of Congress could hold the hideous beliefs that fester in what passes for this woman’s heart.

None of that likely will happen.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a disgrace.

local news, medical news

Not so fast on reopening!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My friends and former neighbors in Amarillo, Texas, might be facing a relapse, a return to the conditions that caused plenty of alarm in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

City and county officials are planning to allow the reopening of bars, restaurants and other public gathering places. Why? Because hospitalization rates are plummeting.

I would like to offer a word of caution: Don’t do it! At least not just yet!

KFDA News Channel 10 reports: The city has been under the 15% hospitalization rate threshold for six days now. If the city remains under that rate for one more day, Amarillo will no longer be considered an area of high hospitalization. City Manager Jared Miller said bars in Potter and Randall counties may reopen at 50% percent capacity if the hospitalization rate remains under 15% as of 4:00 p.m. today.

Amarillo businesses to reopen, expand capacity thanks to low hospitalization rates (newschannel10.com)

Here’s my concern: What happens if hospitalization and infections spike again in Amarillo? Does the city close the place down once more?

Amarillo has been getting a good bit of media love in recent days over the vaccination rate it has been providing. The city ranks at or near the top of all American cities in the inoculation rate it is delivering to residents. I applaud the city for its response to the pandemic.

My concern from my perch 350 miles away is that the city might be getting a bit too cavalier as it seeks to reopen its business community.

The pandemic ain’t over! There might be a whole lot more suffering to come. Indeed, scientists and physicians are warning that the worst has yet to arrive.

I want all of our cities to reopen. I just don’t want to rush it.

“We need everyone to continue doing what we’re doing that’s effecting our numbers in such a positive ways,” said Mayor Ginger Nelson. “I want to be very clear this morning that we can’t ease up. We’re not at the finish line yet.”

Be very, very careful.

media news

Big Lie just won’t die!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

We can thank social media for continuing to breathe life into the Big Lie.

Yes, it is social media’s fault that the Big Lie has more lives than any thousand cats you can find. The Big Lie is being pitched by fruitcakes, traitors, seditionists and, yes, even a former U.S. president.

The Big Lie draws deep breaths on social media outlets that continue to give Big Lie purveyors a platform from which they spout their treasonous nonsense.

It is that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump … the aforementioned ex-president. The Big Lie continues to insist that all 50 states and the District of Columbia, where public servants all certified the results of the election as accurate and secure, cannot be trusted.

Wow! My head is spinning. I am trying to catch my breath, trying to keep my balance as I listen to The Big Lie being repeated not just on social media but also on right-wing TV and radio media outlets that give them an audience to soak up the lie they keep hearing.

Social media have been — at the very least — a mixed blessing. It does plenty of good. It connects people. It allows folks to make new friends and keeps old friendships alive and well. It also serves as a conduit for lies big and small.

It’s The Big Lie that needs to die a quick death. If only social media would pull the plug.

media news

Media: an ‘enemy’ no longer

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You no doubt have noticed what I have noticed.

It is that the media that cover the White House have developed an immediate and highly professional relationship with the folks who run the executive branch of our federal government.

We haven’t seen or heard shouting matches between reporters and White House press aides. Nor have we seen angry tweets from President Biden complaining about how the media are acting like “the enemy of the American people.” 

Have the media gone soft on the new president or on those who speak for him? No. They haven’t. Unless you consider the proper relationship between reporters and those who work for our government a symptom of softness.

I am acutely aware that the relationship between the media and the administration is still a work in progress. I don’t expect entirely smooth sailing with the Biden administration as it plows through the field of policy matters it must confront. There will be missteps, mistakes and perhaps even a misstatement or two along the way. The media will report on them all, just as they have done since the beginning of the republic.

The stark contrast will occur when the Biden administration responds to the critical reporting. Unlike what we saw during the Donald Trump administration, I do not expect to hear blanket allegations of “fake news” coming from administration officials in response to reporting.

There well could be testy exchanges between White House press aides and higher-level officials and the media. I do not expect to hear insults hurled at reporters from the press secretary or certainly from President Biden.

Joe Biden has danced around this media pea patch for nearly five decades as a U.S. senator, as vice president and as a three-time presidential candidate. Now he is the president of the United States and he understands in a way that Donald Trump never grasped that the media are there to do their job.

That job is to hold the government accountable for every decision it makes and every statement its officials utter in public.

That, I dare say, is one way you can define a nation’s greatness.

national news

Wanting to purge Trump

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Oh, how I long for the day when I can purge my conscience of any thought of Donald J. Trump as I watch the current president of the United States carry out his myriad duties … such as what occurred last night at the service honoring a slain Capitol Police officer.

President and Mrs. Biden walked into the Capitol Rotunda to honor the memory of Officer Brian Sicknick, the young man who died in the horrendous riot of Jan. 6, when the terrorists stormed Capitol Hill in a blatant, bald-faced act of insurrection against the U.S. government.

I watched the first couple place their hands over their hearts. I watched President Biden cross himself as they moved away from the officer’s remains.

Then it hit me: We haven’t yet heard a single word of grief, mourning or regret from the man on whose watch the riot occurred and which cost Brian Sicknick his life. Donald Trump continues to remain silent. He continues to demonstrate fully why he was so hideously unfit to hold the office of president of the United States.

The terrorists attacked the Capitol Building at Trump’s urging. The blood that was shed that day splattered all over Donald Trump.

Brian Sicknick died because Donald Trump exhorted the terrorists to do what they did. And yet … the  former president remains stone-cold silent.

One of these days — and I hope it is soon — I won’t think of Donald Trump when I watch President Joe Biden comport himself appropriately in times of grief.

national news

Heading for the congressional outhouse

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Marjorie Taylor Greene appears to be heading for a location way past the back bench of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The first-term Georgia congresswoman — who’s become infamous with her QAnon conspiracy sympathies — might be consigned to the congressional outhouse if her colleagues do what they must in a floor vote Thursday.

Greene has made a “name” for herself by fomenting conspiracy lies about school shootings, about the 9/11 terror attacks, about Muslims, about gay Americans. She is a crackpot who somehow got elected from the 14th Congressional District of Georgia.

The full House will vote on whether she should be stripped of her committee assignments. The House GOP leadership has placed her on the Education and Budget committees. It’s the Education post that has rattled so many Americans in light of what Greene has said.

House to vote Thursday to drop Greene from all committees | TheHill

Greene has suggested that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that killed 20 first- and second-graders along with six teachers was a made-up story. She has castigated survivors of the Stoneham High School massacre in Florida as well.

For this loon to be able to discuss matters involving public education is so far beyond the pale it defies anything approaching logic.

Expulsion from the House is unlikely. What the legislative chamber well could do is virtually silence her in the manner it has done with other members of the body, the most recent of whom was former Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who had this horrifying tendency to speak well of racist organizations.

There has to be a reckoning for Greene back home in Georgia when her seat is up in 2022. Congress must not become a dumping ground for the filth that pours of this individual’s mouth.

International news, national news

Biden restores humanity to immigration policy

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden, using the power of the pen, is doing his level best to restore a sense of humanity and compassion to a national immigration policy that took on a radically different tone during the tenure of his immediate presidential predecessor.

Signing executive orders left and right in the Oval Office, Biden has reversed a Donald Trump administration policy that separated children from their parents in a widespread effort to stop illegal entry into this country.

The president said he isn’t enacting a new law, just discarding a bad policy with his executive order. The policy is as inhumane as anything we have seen in the past, oh, 60 or 70 years.

Politico reports: “Fully remedying [Trump’s] actions will take time and require a full government approach,” a senior administration official said in a briefing with reporters on Monday night.

“But President Biden has been very clear about restoring compassion and order to our immigration system and correcting the divisive, inhumane and immoral policies of the last four years,” the official said, adding that Biden’s action, so far, was “just the beginning.”

Biden signs executive orders on family separation and asylum – POLITICO

President Biden’s order establishes a task force that seeks to identify children separated from their parents. The Trump administration enacted what it called a “zero tolerance policy” on illegal entry and separated roughly 5,500 families; more than 600 children remain unaccounted for, according to officials.

President Biden vowed during the 2020 campaign to restore a sense of humanity to our immigration policy. No, he doesn’t favor “open borders,” which has become a demagogic canard for those who favored the family-separation policies enacted by Donald Trump’s administration. Biden’s stated goal is to give undocumented U.S. residents a faster track toward obtaining legal residency status or citizenship.

He wants families restored first. That is what the executive order seeks to do.

military news

He was truly ‘unforgettable’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Reader’s Digest magazine has a regular feature that tells of the “most unforgettable characters” in people’s lives.

Many of us have met people who fit into that category.

Well, the most unforgettable character in my life has passed on. I got word of his death tonight and I want to share a tale or two with you about him.

His name was Henry L. Quisenberry, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. He was my commanding officer for a time while I served in Vietnam. He died Jan. 31 at his home in Enterprise, Ala.

I reported for duty in Vietnam in the spring of 1969. I was assigned to the 245th Army Surveillance Aircraft Company at Marble Mountain, Da Nang, with orders to report for duty on a crew assigned to service an OV-1 Mohawk.

Col. Quisenberry showed up eventually to assume interim command of the 212th Aviation Battalion. As I recall, our CO was on R&R and Col. Quisenberry was filling in. While he was there, he called me to his office. I had no clue what he wanted.

He was sitting behind a desk. He offered me a cigar and invited me to sit down. “I see here that you’re a Mohawk repairman,” he said. “Well, I am a Mohawk driver.” He told me the Mohawk is a reliable bird and he enjoyed flying it.

He then told me he needed me to report on a temporary duty assignment with what was called the Army Aviation Element, based at the I Corps Tactical Operations Center in Da Nang. My duties would include running a radio, and clearing aircraft to land at a helipad nearby. We scheduled flights for officers and scrambled troop lift and fire support missions for Army helicopter units based at Marble Mountain.

Col. Quisenberry was a fantastic officer. He was loyal to his men and always had our backs. He was serving his third tour of duty in Vietnam and he confided in me that it would be his last tour, that he intended to retire as soon as he returned home. He was a great story teller

An incident occurred that illustrates how reliable he could be in a pinch. A pilot sought to land on our helipad. I was on the radio at the time. I couldn’t quite give him clearance to land; I cannot remember the circumstance. We began arguing over the air about my reluctance to clear him to park his bird. I mentioned Col. Quisenberry over the air, referring to his call sign. The pilot then said, “You better tell Check Pull Alpha Six to get his sh** together,” at which time Col. Quisenberry — who was standing behind me and overheard the entire exchange — grabbed the radio receiver and said, “This is Check Pull Alpha Six. Park your bird and report to me … pahdnuh.

The colonel then chewed the pilot out royally and told him to apologize to me for being an ass over the air.

There you have it. Col. Quiz embedded himself at that moment as the most unforgettable character I ever met.

military news, national news

Always revere the office

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s no secret that I am delighted beyond measure to be rid of Donald Trump and I welcome a new president of the United States.

President Biden has taken a firm grip on the levers of power and for that I am grateful. However, I want to share a brief story that involves in a tangential way the man Biden succeeded as president.

My wife and I vacationed in Washington, D.C., during the summer of 2017. We visited our niece and her husband. We spent several days walking around the city with them, enjoying the sights and sounds of our nation’s capital.

We were strolling through Georgetown when I heard a helicopter flying overhead. I looked up. It was Marine One, the military chopper that carries the president of the United States. Donald Trump had traveled somewhere and was returning at that moment aboard the helicopter to the White House.

I must acknowledge a certain thrill at seeing Marine One passing over us, even as it carried the detestable individual who had moved into the White House earlier that year.

This is my way of expressing my reverence for the presidency. I have expressed already in this forum my love of pageantry, of the pomp and circumstance that accompanies the office and the person who occupies it.

True story, but the thrill at seeing Marine One en route to the White House did not diminish one little bit on that lovely summer day.

This is my way of suggesting that the office is far larger and important than any individual who sits behind that big desk in the Oval Office.