Monthly Archives: March 2021

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 89: The reaction is clear

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Toby the Puppy is the first pooch to join our family in … ever! We had a couple of dogs but they didn’t stay long enough to become assimilated into our household.

My wife and I, therefore, became pretty fluent in kitty speak over many decades of welcoming cats into our home. It has taken a bit of time to learn puppy speak, but Toby the Puppy makes it a bit easier.

Lately, he has adopted a new way of communicating whether he is ready to embark somewhere with his parents, my wife and me.

What does he do? Well, we will say, “Do you want to go for a walk, Puppy?” If he does, then he runs for any one of about six or seven toys scattered around the house. He grabs the toy and shakes it violently. That means, in puppy speak, that “yes, I want to go for a walk.”

He will do the same thing if he is ready to go for a ride in the truck. Or if he is ready to see our granddaughter Emma when she comes over for some play time.

We already are aware of how he recognizes certain words, such as treat, or walk, or Emma. We don’t say those words until we are prepared for his enthusiastic response. Plus, we don’t want to let him down if we let those words slip out at the wrong time.

However, our puppy has become very adept at letting us know when we say the right word at the right time.

national news

Social media ‘war’ to end?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The thought occurs to me that President Biden’s election in 2020 has produced an anticipated but highly underreported positive effect.

During the term of Donald J. Trump, there appeared — anecdotally, at least — to be a serious spike in destroyed friendships and other relationships among longtime friends and significant others.

I lost a few friends during the past four years over intense political differences. I am not proud of whatever I might have contributed to those falling-outs.

Trump is gone from the White House. Probably forever. Joe Biden’s term has begun and I am going to suggest right here that we might see a serious leveling off of the kind of animus we witnessed or heard about during Trump’s term as president.

That is a good thing. Don’t you think?

President Biden is a student of the school that suggests that political adversaries need not be enemies. Trump didn’t operate at that level. He seemingly has few political friends beyond the cultists who pledge that goofy fealty to the man. But, oh brother, he has developed more than his fair share of political enemies. Trump also has dished out the enemy label as well.

Biden rolls differently. He cultivated a reputation as a U.S. senator who was able to reach across to Republicans. He brought those decades of Senate experience to the White House as vice president in the Obama administration.

My strong sense is that as president, Joe Biden will soothe the roiling waters that have swamped friendships and spoiled many family dinners across the land. I cannot presume that would be his strategy. It’s just an effect of the kind of leadership skill he has demonstrated over his many years in public service.

Do I expect a restoration of my lost friendships? I am not holding my breath. I do expect there to be a diminution of the friendship fracturing moving ahead during the presidency of Joe Biden.

national news

Mistake-free presidency: out of the question

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A bit of clarity is in order.

Many of you who read this blog might have presumed that I expect President Biden’s term in office to go without hiccups, missteps, mistakes. You would be wrong.

I do not expect perfection from the president. All I demand of him should be that he own his mistakes when they occur and he is able to understand that they, indeed, are mistakes. It is a quality we did not see in the man who preceded Biden in the nation’s highest office.

Donald Trump was incapable of owning a mistake. A misstatement? That was even more out of the question! He never admitted lying to us … about anything!

President Biden has been in office for a little more than 50 days. By my count, he’s made one semi-serious goof: He declined to issue sanctions against the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman, for ordering the ghastly murder of U.S. journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

There will be more errors. Joe Biden is as human as the rest of us, which of course goes without even mentioning.

I am not setting the bar too high for President Biden. Nor should anyone who expects honesty and truth-telling from our president.

He’s already scored a big legislative victory in getting congressional Democrats to hang together in approving a $1.9 trillion relief bill aimed at helping Americans survive the COVID pandemic. Next up? It appears to be a huge bill to improve our infrastructure: roads, bridges, airports, rail lines.

Donald Trump talked a great deal during his term about improving infrastructure, but he never delivered the goods. Why not? Because he did not have a lick of political/legislative/government experience when he became president.

President Biden cannot claim inexperience as his fallback in the event of failure. He served 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president in the Obama administration. Now, whether he succeeds in pushing infrastructure improvements over the finish line will depend on whether he brings his vast experience to bear.

If he does, great! If he doesn’t, he’ll need to tell us why he failed.

I expect that level of honesty from our president and I remain hopeful we’re going to get it from Joseph R. Biden.

local news

They were sturdy folk

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have just about finished reading a book it took me far longer than I thought it would take to read.

The book is titled “The Worst Hard Time.” It was written by a stellar New York Times reporter, Timothy Egan, who chronicled in astonishing detail the suffering that came to the Texas Panhandle during the 1930s.

The Dust Bowl plundered the landscape made vulnerable by farming techniques that destroyed the native grasslands that kept the soil in place, preventing wind erosion. The Dust Bowl has been labeled the “worst manmade disaster in U.S. history.”

“The Worst Hard Time” tells story after story of how these sturdy residents of places like Dalhart, Perryton and, yes, Amarillo weathered the astonishing misery of that era. Black Sunday is still thought to be the most nightmarish scenario anyone ever saw, as enormous, towering clouds of dust blew in over the region.

Just how bad was it then? | High Plains Blogger

Children and old people died of “dust pneumonia.” Farmers lost crops. They couldn’t pay their bills. Livestock died by the tens of thousands of head.

Many of them moved away. Many others of them stayed. Their descendants live in Amarillo to this day. I got to know some of those Dust Bowl descendants during my time there. They are a remarkable lot.

For a time after I left the Amarillo Globe-News, I had the privilege of writing a blog for Panhandle PBS, the Amarillo College-affiliated TV station. They paid me to write about public affairs TV programming shown on KACV-TV in the Panhandle.

In March 2016, PBS broadcast a special called “The Dust Bowl,” which was put together by noted historian/documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. I wrote a blog post that talked about its airing.

‘Dust Bowl’ returns just as Panhandle dries out (panhandlepbs.org)

I do hope that PBS will show “The Dust Bowl” again. I want to witness the accounts of those individuals whose stories I read about in “The Worst Hard Time.”

Yes, it was a hard time. The worst of it was unimaginable to those of us who never lived through it.

Timothy Egan’s book only deepens my pride in my former neighbors and fellow travelers.

DC riot

Shades of ‘good people … on both sides’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ron Johnson has a screw loose in that vacuous noggin of his.

The Wisconsin Republican U.S. senator made a statement about the insurrection of The Sixth of January that truly makes me wonder about this clown’s fitness to serve in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

He told a Wisconsin radio interview several things, two of which stand out in my mind.

One is that the insurrection didn’t “scare me at all” because the terrorists were Donald Trump supporters. But … had the shoe been on the proverbial other foot and Trump had won the 2020 election and had Black Lives Matters or antifa followers had rioted in that fashion, why, then he would have felt endangered.

The racist tenor of that remark stands alone. It is hideous in the extreme. Oh, but then he said something else that makes my spine shudder.

He said the terrorists were “law-abiding” citizens who “would never do anything” against the law. Look at the picture I posted with this blog. It shows terrorists storming into the Capitol Building. Hmm. Oh, and they killed a Capitol Police officer during the melee and injured several others, not to mention causing the deaths of about five other Americans.

To which laws were these lunatics abiding? None.

It reminds me of Donald Trump’s infamous declaration after the KKK/Nazi-inspired riot in Charlottesville when he declared there to be “good people … on both sides” of that deadly riot.

Someone needs to slap a straitjacket on Sen. Johnson.

medical news

Let’s not get ahead of this?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If I were to express a nagging anxiety about the “good news” we keep hearing about the possible/potential end of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that we need to avoid getting ahead of ourselves.

Good news is coming at us by waves these days.

COVID infections are declining; so are hospitalizations; death rates are falling.

Are we getting complacent? I hope that is not the case.

Yet, that is my fear as governors around the nation — including Texas’s Greg Abbott — make these bold declarations while removing statewide mandates for Americans to wear masks. Sure, Abbott and others tell us to take all the necessary precautions, such as practice social distancing, washing our hands, keep sanitizer handy (and use it!). Are we heeding the advice or are we listening only to what we perceive to be the end of a national nightmare?

We must not get ahead of the scientists who are working their butts off searching for more cures for the disease that has killed 530,000-plus Americans and sickened millions more of us.

Hey, I want a return to normal, too. I want to see family and friends more frequently. I want to spend more quality time with my granddaughter.

However, I do not want others to put all of that in peril by declaring a premature victory in this war against an invisible killer.

economic news

POTUS keeps name off checks

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It is worth asking, I suppose, whether any American who receives a COVID-19 relief check from the U.S. Treasury is going to wonder why it lacks the name of the president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden.

I know the answer. No one is going to care whether President Biden’s name is on the check. Any more than Americans cared that Donald J. Trump’s name was affixed to the earlier round of relief checks that circulated.

Yet, the former president made a big deal out of ensuring that his name appeared on them. He wanted Americans to see that he was responsible for the help that arrived in their bank accounts or in their mail boxes.

Except that Donald Trump played virtually no role in negotiating the deal that helped millions of Americans.

His successor, Joe Biden, did play a role in crafting this current round of relief. However, his name will be nowhere on the payments.

That’s how collaborative government is supposed to work.

local news

‘Social distancing’ becomes part of our vernacular

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I wondered a year ago about the term social distancing.

“Social distancing.” The newest term of art born out of the latest crisis. I can’t decide how to define it: a verb? a noun? an adjective?

That was my thought a year ago on a Facebook post as the nation began to grapple seriously with a killer virus. Little did we know — although some of us expected it — that the COVID-19 virus would kill more than 500,000 Americans.

So here we are. The vaccines have arrived. They are being injected into Americans’ bodies. The hospitalization and death rates are declining. President Biden wants us to celebrate Independence Day as a twofer this coming Fourth of July: to mark our independence as a nation and our independence from the virus.

However, we’re going to continue to practice social distancing.

I no longer am concerning myself with how to categorize the term. I have accepted it now as part of our vernacular. It kind of rolls off the tongue easily these days. Heck, I am willing to type the term without enclosing it in quotation marks. I guess that’s a sign of general acceptance.

You know what? That’s OK with me. Social distancing has become a tactic we have employed in our house as part of a strategy to keep ourselves safe from infection.

So far, so good.

I am going to keep my social distance from strangers … maybe even after we are able to declare victory in this fight for our lives.

local news

Waiting for library to reopen

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

George W. Bush ran five times for public office.

Twice for Texas governor in 1994 and 1998. Twice for president of the United States in 2000 and 2004. I voted for his opponents every time. I hadn’t moved to Texas yet when Bush ran in 1978 for a West Texas seat in Congress, which he lost. There, I got that out of the way.

Still, I am saddened to read that the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is still “temporarily closed.” The damn COVID-19 virus has shuttered the doors of the library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

My wife and I moved to Collin County in 2018, which puts us within a brief drive to W’s library in Big D. I have been there three times already and I had planned on taking a family member who’s coming to visit at the end of next week.

I want to mention this because I have grown more respectful of the former president as time has moved on. He looks quite good to me these days, given the most recent Republican president with whom the nation has contended for the past four years. Plus, President Bush was among the first prominent GOP politicians to recognize publicly the election of President Biden in 2020, calling him an honorable and decent man. Indeed, the men did work well together when Bush was president and Biden was a U.S. Senate icon.

Moreover, it was the Bush White House team that worked so seamlessly after the 2008 election to ensure a smooth transition to an administration led by Barack Obama and, oh yeah, Joe Biden.

I am left now to hope for a reopening of the library, which I find quite compelling whenever I visit it.

national news

Is Trump scarred forever?

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REUTERS/Octavio Jones

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s post-presidential existence cannot possibly end well.

I say that without any knowledge of whether he will be indicted by two states that are pursuing criminal charges against him. Even if no indictments will be part of Trump’s future, my gut tells me he is likely to be scarred forever by the pursuit of the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney and the Manhattan DA up yonder in New York City.

The Fulton County DA is pursuing whether Trump violated state law by pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes to swing the state’s 2020 presidential election result from favoring President Biden to favoring Trump. This investigation appears to be fairly straightforward and reasonably uncomplicated.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis is an experienced prosecutor and she has vowed to spare no effort in following the evidence that she will present to a grand jury which will decide whether to indict Trump.

The Manhattan case, led by Cyrus Vance Jr., is a whole lot more complicated. As I understand it, Vance is examining whether Trump violated campaign finance laws in paying off a porn star to keep quiet about a sexual liaison she and Trump allegedly had in 2006. Oh, and Trump denies it happened — but he paid her 130 grand anyway! Go figure. He’s even hired a prosecutor experienced in racketeering cases to help him make the case.

I cannot possibly know whether either prosecutorial team is going to bring formal charges against Trump.

However, my sense of understanding of how history looks back on political figures tells me that historians are going to judge Trump’s time since leaving office harshly. That prosecutors even are considering whether to file charges suggests to me that Trump will be scarred for life.