Monthly Archives: February 2021

media news

Goodbye, Rush

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com 

My smart phone news feed chirped at me this morning as I was returning home from a newspaper assignment in Farmersville. I took just a moment to see what was there: Rush Limbaugh has died of cancer at age 70.

I’ve been thinking ever since about what I ought to say about that. I will spare the invective I have used to comment previously about Limbaugh to offer only this.

Donald Trump called him a “legend.” Well … he isn’t.

Limbaugh earned his chops as a right-wing radio commentator/talk show host. He had the dubious distinction of telling falsehoods over the air, such as fomenting the lie about former President Obama’s place of birth and questioning whether he was constitutionally qualified to run for president of the United States.

He told enough lies, then, to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump. By then, though, he was stricken with the cancer that would kill and, so, Trump rewarded him for saying nice things about the president.

Limbaugh’s impact on the American body politic is unmistakable. He did not advance the cause of civil discourse or understanding of complicated issues of the day.

I won’t miss him.

There. It took quite a bit for me to mostly forgo the epithets I used to toss at him, which is far better than he ever gave to those with whom he disagreed.

So long, Daddy Dittohead.

local news

A word of thanks is due

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A lot of us have been griping lately about the status of the power we use to heat our homes, shed light onto the dark and even light the flame in our fireplaces.

I saw the attached picture on my Facebook news feed this morning and I want to echo the thoughts that came with it.

We owe the men and women who have been toiling in frigid temperatures, in the snow, and the wind for the work they have done trying to keep our electricity flowing.

I am going to reserve my ill will for the folks in the boardrooms who make decisions about managing the electrical flow. A lot of them have messed up and North Texans — such as my wife, Toby the Puppy and me — have paid the price. We slept through two chilly nights in our Princeton home, owing mostly to the decisions to shut down power capacity while we were battling the effects of what has been called a “historic winter storm event.”

The folks who answer the call, though, are not to blame for what we have endured, any more than those — for example — who went to war in Vietnam and then returned home to frigid indifference from the American public.

I’ll take this moment to offer them a word of thanks, high praise and gratitude for exposing themselves to the elements so that we don’t have to suffer from Mother Nature’s wrath.

I’m proud of y’all.

national news

Get well, Mr. President

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden apparently suffers from an ailment that has afflicted millions of Americans just like me.

He is infected with Trump Fatigue. The president took part Tuesday in a CNN-sponsored town hall event in Milwaukee and declared that he is “tired of Trump.” He is tired of talking about his immediate predecessor. He wants to focus on the crises that confront him and plans to deal with them.

“I don’t want to keep talking about Trump,” Biden said, vowing that during his term in office he wants the subject to be “millions of Americans.”

Well … isn’t that a refreshing change?

I am all in, Mr. President.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/02/16/biden_im_tired_of_talking_about_donald_trump_i_dont_want_to_talk_about_him_anymore.html

The town hall also included another fascinating — and in a way a related — notion from the president. He referenced the Justice Department and declared that it isn’t “my Department of Justice.” He said the department doesn’t work for the president, but that it works for all Americans. He noted that DOJ became, during the Trump administration, the “most political” DOJ in U.S. history.

Indeed, I would implore President Biden to shuck the first-person possessive pronoun when referring to the government. President Obama had an annoying habit of constantly referring to “my vice president,” or “my national security team,” or “my Cabinet.” Donald Trump continued that practice during  his term, making reference to “my generals” and “my Justice Department.”

Memo to all presidents: You don’t own these individuals or the departments where they work. All of you, and that includes the individual at the top of the chain of command, are hired by us, you and me, to do our bidding.

So, with that President Biden — in office now for just four weeks — is seeking to chart a new direction for the federal government and for the media that cover it and report on it to the public.

He also must cure himself of the fatigue that has set in.

Get well, Mr. President.

national news

Trump goes to ‘war’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald John Trump no longer occupies the White House. He is the first-ever U.S. president to be twice impeached. He escaped conviction both times, but his reputation is scarred forever.

Does that silence the former president? Does it consign him to the back of the room where he would sit silently?

Hardly. He is now going after Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell in a personal, insulting and denigrating way.

I guess the two no longer are the pals they became after Trump got elected in 2016. I mean, all McConnell did for Trump was delay a Supreme Court confirmation until after Trump took office in 2017, enabling him to nominate Neil Gorsuch to the seat that should have gone to Merrick Garland. If Trump had an ounce of gratitude in his overfed body, he would realize he owes McConnell bigly for that opportunity.

Trump, in Scorching Attack on McConnell, Urges G.O.P. to Replace Him (msn.com)

No, he’s angry now because McConnell managed to tell us what he should have said long ago, which is that Trump provoked the riot that damn near could have resulted in harm to Vice President Mike Pence. McConnell did cast a not guilty vote in the Senate trial, but then kinda/sorta walked it back by saying he voted that way on a technicality.

Hey, I am not going to shed any tears for McConnell. I figure he can hold his own against the numbskull ex-president. Besides, I think he’s acted in a detestable manner, just not for the reasons that Trump cited in his lengthy statement.

Donald Trump has just shown us — as if we needed reminding — that he is going to keep flapping his yapper.

environmental news, State news

ERCOT hardly ‘reliable’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is angry.

He can join millions of other Texans who share his dismay, his disgust with a major supplier of electrical energy to the vast state he governs.

We are going through massive, widespread power outages while the state battles an unprecedented winter freeze. We are going through it in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Millions of us lost power for days. It’s back on at our house in Princeton, but to be brutally honest, I continue to fear it could go sideways in an instant.

Abbott and several state legislators want to launch a thorough investigation into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas; I emphasize the term “Reliability” because ERCOT has been anything but a “reliable” provider of electrical energy.

The Texas Tribune reports: “The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has been anything but reliable over the past 48 hours,” Abbott said in a statement. “Far too many Texans are without power and heat for their homes as our state faces freezing temperatures and severe winter weather. This is unacceptable.”

ERCOT is a non-profit organization that manages the electrical grid that covers about 90 percent of Texas. Hmm. Let’s see, Texas comprises about 269,000 square miles, which means ERCOT manages electricity for about 242,000 of that vast real estate.

It hasn’t done too well as the provider of electricity for a state facing the crises it encountered when the Arctic blast blew in from points way up yonder.

The Tribune reports further: The governor’s latest announcement came hours after Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, asked two committees in the lower chamber to hold a joint hearing later this month to review the outages. Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, requested the House State Affairs and Energy Resources committees convene for the hearing on Feb. 25.

“We must cut through the finger-pointing and hear directly from stakeholders about the factors that contributed to generation staying down at a time when families needed it most, what our state can do to correct these issues and what steps regulators and grid operators are taking to safeguard our electric grid,” Phelan said in a news release.

Texas power outage prompts calls for investigation into ERCOT | The Texas Tribune

I’m just a consumer, a taxpayer, a longtime Texas resident who has come to rely on “reliable” energy to heat my home and to protect my family. ERCOT has failed us.

national security

Yes, open a Jan. 6 probe

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(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – to the surprise of no one who reads this blog regularly – is someone I admire greatly. She demonstrated it again today.

Why? She declared her intention to ramrod the creation of a blue-ribbon, bipartisan, independent commission to examine thoroughly the events that led to the insurrection that occurred on the Sixth of January.

She intends to find out who was responsible for it, why the rioters/terrorists did what they did, on whose instruction, their purpose … all of it.

Pelosi aims to have this commission follow the lead of the 9/11 commission that President Bush created after the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. That panel, led by former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean and former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, formulated a detailed response to what went wrong. It also recommended the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. I also should add that we haven’t been hit by foreign terrorists since that dreadful day.

We have, though, been plagued by domestic terrorists, the likes of whom stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 intending to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which produced a winner not named Donald John Trump. FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2019 that domestic terror groups posed a greater threat to our national security than monstrous outfits such as ISIS or al-Qaeda.

Must we get to the root of what happened? Must we find out whether the rioters were answering some nefarious call to arms by the then-president of the United States, who told them he would be among them as they marched on the Capitol Building, only to watch it unfold from the White House?

Yes, the speaker of the House is seeking answers to questions that are troubling many millions of Americans.

environmental news, national news

That wasn’t much fun

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

We moved from what I have called The Texas Tundra to what I thought was something of a Banana Belt.

Silly me.

Rolling blackouts? Never experienced ’em in the Panhandle in our 23 years living there. I am sure some folks have experienced the joy of going without power for, oh, an hour or two to save energy.

However, the blackout from which we have just emerged wasn’t the “rolling” kind. It turns out that the power grid that serves the state of Texas isn’t equipped to handle zero-degree temperatures with extended regions of the vast state enduring wind chills in the neighborhood of minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

We don’t have water just yet. The power went out at the Princeton water treatment plant, too. I have been advised by a neighbor in the know that the water will be flowing “in a few hours.”

I realize this might be a once-in-a-lifetime event for a lot of us. The wind chill factors have been punishing to say the least.

Our power went out late Sunday. It came back on for a time in wee hours Monday, then we went dark again. We awoke Monday to no electricity, but we had water. The temperature was about 15 degrees and heading south in a hurry.

We turned in early Monday night because the house was dark, we couldn’t read. So we figured, “What the hey?” We woke up this morning still with no lights.

Oh, and the temperature registered zero … degrees. 

The water went out during the night. We got up once or twice, turned on the faucets to let it drip. It did for a time. Then it stopped.

We hope we have powered through this crisis. It’s still early. The power came on and we did what we were advised to do: We unplugged all the unnecessary appliances, such as the toaster, blender, can opener, digital clock, the reclining living room couch.

Pray for us the rest of the way, will ya?

Meanwhile, I need to do a little research to determine whether our city fathers and mothers did all they could do to prepare for this event.

economic news, environmental news

It’s cold, but …

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Winter can be a bitch.

My wife and I sat in a cold house for most of two days, victimized by a remarkable freeze that paralyzed much of Texas. It certainly grabbed North Texas by the throat. Our electrical grid was overtaxed and it couldn’t handle the demands placed on it by the plummeting temperature.

I am struck by a thought that keeps nagging at me. Weather such as what we experienced – 10-degree high temperatures and lows near zero in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, for crying out loud! – is going to energize the climate change deniers out there.

They are going to say something like this: Hey, the bitter cold weather of the winter of 2021 just proves that Earth’s climate isn’t changing, that it isn’t warming up, that our planet isn’t in dire jeopardy at all!

To which I would say: Nonsense. Earth’s climate is changing and our planet and those of us who live on it are facing dire peril every year we fail to come to grips with humanity’s contribution to the change.

I am reminded of the time an infamous climate-change denier, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to illustrate the very point that climate change is a hoax. Why, how can Earth’s climate be warming when Washington, D.C., at that very moment was gripped in such a bitter cold snap?

Such idiocy doesn’t take the long view, doesn’t look at it through the longest lens possible.

National environmental observers note that the median temperature of Earth, examined over a period of an entire year, suggest a distinct warming trend. I daresay that when they take our planet’s temperature at the end of this year it will continue to show the same trend.

So please. Spare me the notion that a current deep freeze – a symptom of winter weather – is somehow proof that the larger crisis doesn’t exist. It most certainly does exist.

Now … I am just wishing for a quick warmup.

Sports news, State news

Sing it out loudly?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick got his underwear tied up in knots when Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban announced he wouldn’t allow the playing of the national anthem before NBA games at the American Airlines Center.

Then the NBA intervened and declared that, oh yes you will, Mr. Cuban, play the anthem, because it’s league policy that we hear “The Star Spangled Banner” before pro basketball games.

Patrick, though, was so angry he announced he would push for “The Star Spangled Banner Protection Act” in the Texas Senate, over which he presides.

The act is quite fascinating. The Texas Tribune reports about the bill: It hasn’t been filed yet, but it would require the playing of the anthem at all events that receive public funding. Presumably, that would include sessions of the House and Senate, which start with prayers, and pledges to the U.S. and Texas flags, but no anthem.

Analysis: A Star-Spangled culture war in Texas | The Texas Tribune

Let’s play this out. Do we play the anthem before we commence, oh, city council or school board meetings, or before counties’ commissioners courts meeting? They’re all open to the public. They receive public money, too.

I have the pleasure of attending Farmersville City Council and school board of trustees meetings as a freelance reporter for the Farmersville Times. I do not believe we are going to sing the anthem before the governing bodies start their meetings.

This, I submit, is a typical example of government overreaction that offers a so-called solution to an alleged problem.

media news, national news

We can breathe again!

3 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot possibly take credit for this, for it came brilliantly from a young broadcast journalist to whom my wife and I were listening this afternoon.

Yasmin Vossoughian, an MSNBC anchor, offered an insightful analysis of what the nation and the world have just experienced in the past week: the end of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Vossoughian said, simply, that we are now able to breathe again. Donald Trump no longer is president, and for that I sense many of us are grateful for reasons that go far beyond the contemptible manner in which he conducted himself as president.

He took the air out of the proverbial room seemingly every day he was in office. Indeed, it seems like the longest four years in many of our lives … you know?

Bloggers like me were sucked into the maelstrom that Trump created. The media, too. Yes, the folks Trump labeled as the “enemy of the people” became his most visible enablers.

Now, though, we can turn our attention to other things. Issues abound. Crises are all over the place.

We’re still waging war against a killer pandemic; our economy has collapsed; we have an environment in trouble; many Americans are treated unfairly by police authorities only because of the color of their skin.

President Biden won’t suck the air out of the room the way his immediate predecessor did. That is more than OK with me.

As for the media, my hope is that reporters also will relish the opportunity to chronicle the struggles that require government’s attention. My sense, given my own experience, is that they will welcome the relief from the exhaustion from which they will need a bit of time to recover.