Monthly Archives: March 2021

State news

‘Open borders’? Hah!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A South Texas congressional Democrat, Filemon Vela of Brownsville, today announced he won’t seek another term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

His seat had become a target for Republicans who see a chance to what had been a staunchly Democratic seat.

What slays me, though, is the reaction, as reported by the Texas Tribune, of the GOP in response to Vela’s unsurprising announcement:

“Filemon Vela knows Biden’s border crisis will cost him his seat and Democrats their House majority,” said House GOP campaign arm spokesperson Torunn Sinclair. “Texans deserve a congressman who is going to stand up to Biden’s open border agenda, not defend it.”

Open border agenda? Is this clown for real?

There is no “open border agenda” being pushed by President Biden. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this weekend declared the border “is closed.”

Yes, the Biden administration has been caught flat-footed by the influx of undocumented immigrants seeking entry into the United States, particularly the unaccompanied children who have been rounded up and taken to holding centers, such as the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas.

But … there is no “open border agenda” being pursued. The GOP campaign flack is spouting demagogic nonsense.

media news

Biden gets unfair criticism on this point

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The criticism from right-wing media that President Biden isn’t talking as freely to reporters as his presidential predecessor is unfair to the point of being outrageous.

Donald Trump became (in)famous for spouting off to the media whenever someone showed up with a notebook, a microphone and a TV camera. He would ramble on and on, saying virtually nothing of substance and often would spout a lie or three while yapping to the media.

It was all a show, given that he labeled the media “the enemy of the people” and the purveyor of “fake news.”

Joe Biden prefers to let the White House press secretary, Jan Psaki, do the talking. I am all right with that as long as Psaki tells us the truth. I get that she has been needled for muttering too many “I’ll have to circle back” responses to questions she cannot answer directly.

President Biden is going to stage his first full-blown presidential news conference later this week. It’ll be something of a show, replete with a bit of presidential pomp and panache. Now that I think about it, we might see a bit of a return to the way President Kennedy would demonstrate his legendary quick wit, turning his press briefings into media events.

It’s all OK with me. Just make sure, Mr. POTUS, that your press flack tells us the truth when the media push her for answers.

national news

What happened to 11th Commandment?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ronald W. Reagan would be an angry man today.

President Reagan once coined a phrase that became known as the 11th Commandment, which stated that “Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans.” The Republican Party of President Reagan’s era wasn’t always faithful to that “commandment.”

Today it is so far removed from that dictum that the party bears virtually no resemblance to the conservative political organization that Reagan helped reconstruct in the 1980s.

Instead, the nation is watching a party being retooled yet again by the latest GOP president, who is launching a nationwide campaign against any Republican who dared stand against him while he committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the U.S. of A.

Donald Trump is now targeting, for example, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, who had the temerity to resist the Big Lie that Trump keeps telling that the Georgia presidential election was “stolen” from Trump and given to President Biden. The ex-president is backing a GOP primary opponent against Raffensperger, whose only “sin” was to, um, follow the damn law!

Trump looks to take down Raffensperger in Georgia – POLITICO

Trump has taking aim as well across the nation, seeking to destroy GOP politicians who just couldn’t bring themselves to practice blind fealty to the disgraced former president.

If only President Reagan were around today to take the former Numbskull in Chief to the proverbial “woodshed.”

national news

Filibuster? Yes, but make ’em talk!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Senate Democrats and progressives around the country want to eliminate the filibuster from Senate procedure.

They contend it is being abused by the Republican minority in the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” I am not going to join that chorus. I don’t have a particular problem with the filibuster, other than the way it is implemented now.

Senators can declare a filibuster is in effect when they object to legislation. Then they go about their business as if nothing is happening.

If they’re going to filibuster, they should be forced to stand on the Senate floor and talk their lungs out in an effort to kill legislation. Make ’em blab about this and/or that, which is what the filibuster was designed initially to require.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said recently he would talk until he “fell over.” I might pay real American money to see that happen.

The filibuster is aimed to protect the interests of the political minority. At the moment, the GOP is the minority party. One day they might regain control of the Senate, although I don’t particularly want that to happen. What happens then, if the Senate kills the filibuster now, disallowing future political minorities from exercising the long-standing Senate rule?

The filibuster wasn’t written into the Constitution; it was enacted under Senate rule-making authority. Getting rid of it only solves the issue of the moment. The balance of power has this way of swinging back and forth.

If we keep the filibuster, by all means then make senators stand in the well and bluster and bloviate until they do fall over.

national news

Indictment coming? Hmm?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The immediate past president of the United States reportedly is plotting his political future while he spends time at his posh resort in South Florida.

Hold on a minute, Donald Trump.

The ex-president’s political future might be decided by at least two prosecutors up and down the East Coast. One of them, District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in Manhattan, N.Y., reportedly is assembling a mountain of evidence related to assorted tax, campaign finance and related matters associated with Trump. He keeps calling back a former Trump lawyer/fixer/convicted felon for more information on what Trump did before he was elected president. Vance also has summoned the help of racketeering investigators who reportedly are pretty adept at rooting our corruption.

Meanwhile, down yonder in Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis is looking into whether Trump broke state laws by pressuring a Georgia secretary of state into “finding” enough votes to flip that state’s presidential election total; President Biden won that state’s electoral votes, but Trump reportedly wanted officials to dig up enough votes to give Trump the electoral victory.

I haven’t a clue as to either of these probes will produce indictments. However, I have heard reports from prosecutors experienced in these matters who suggest that Cyrus Vance Jr. is closing in on a near-certain indictment of the former president on an array of campaign finance violation and/or tax violations. He was able to secure those elusive tax returns that Trump has fought so hard to keep from public view.

So, does Donald Trump have a political future, such as a potential return to the presidential campaign trail in 2024? I’ll venture a wild guess and suggest that any future that awaits Donald Trump likely won’t include raw politics.

At least that is my sincere hope.

International news

Jetliner still missing

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Hey, we just went through a hideous commemorative date and no one paid a lick of attention to it.

March 8 came and went and few of us took note that it is the seventh year since a Boeing 777 jetliner with hundreds of human beings aboard vanished without a trace. Malaysia Air Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. Then it went poof, gone.

It reportedly went down somewhere in the Indian Ocean. No one has found the wreckage of the massive jetliner.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared 7 years ago; investigators still don’t know its final resting place (yahoo.com)

I still am asking: How in the world do we lose any trace of this machine? The loved ones of those aboard need closure. I doubt they ever will get it.

So very sad.

national news

Hopes are being dashed

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My hope for a swift return to what they refer to in Washington as “regular order” in Congress is being wiped away.

The hope rested on the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States. He is a man of the Senate. He knows how to legislate, how to get those on the “other side” to join him in the search for common ground.

I guess I didn’t count on the Senate being so fundamentally remade in the image that President Biden replaced, Donald John Trump.

Man, this transition from the Trump Era to the Biden Era so far hasn’t gone quite like I had hoped.

Congressional Republicans appear dug in deeply in their mistrust of the electoral process that produced a Biden victory. They have swallowed the snake oil that Trump has fed them about the election being “stolen.” The irony is stinking rich, given that many of those congressional GOP imposters took an oath to protect the very system they now contend is corrupt.

Well, we still have time. President Biden still has time to win them over. I won’t surrender to the darker impulses that still seem to pervade politics in Washington.

But my eternal hope for a return to regular order is getting dimmer by the week.

Sports news

March Madness is … madness!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There is no way for me to wrap my arms around this thing we call March Madness.

It occurs every year — pandemic notwithstanding — when men’s basketball teams qualify for the national collegiate tournament to determine the national champion.

They assign dozens of teams to the tournament, selecting them to compete against each other. Then it falls on the fools among us to try to predict which two teams make it all the way through to the championship game, which this year will occur in Indianapolis, Ind.

Here’s what confuses me. I cannot find the appropriate way to measure the magnitude of difficulty in determining how one can guess which teams make it all the way through. You have to pick the winners of every game played. How in the name of metaphysical certitude do you do that?

It looks for all the world to be as likely as being snatched off Earth by ETs who have come here from the great beyond.

I hear that sure-fire brackets have busted already. Well … there’s always next year.

State news

Foolishness too often dominates Legislature

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A proposal to make abortion a capital crime in Texas — allowing the state to administer a potential death sentence for a woman who terminates a pregnancy — brings to mind some of the idiocy that too often permeates the state’s legislative process.

State Rep. Bryan Slaton, a Royse City Republican, has pitched the legislative “remedy” to abortion. It shouldn’t, if reason holds up, have a chance in hell of being enacted and then signed into law.

Abortion happens to be legal in this country and for the Legislature to waste a moment of valuable time on this bill is, well, a disgrace.

So is this horrendous talk of secession, which once again has entered the public debate. Texas cannot legally secede from the Union. Period. End of discussion. Yet some Texas Republicans — starting with the party chairman, Allen West — think it’s OK to give Texans a vote on that matter.

Ridiculous.

Texas needs to devote its energy to issues that matter. We need to maintain our roads and highways. And, oh yes, we also have that energy issue to discuss and repair.

Texans went without power in February during that ice and snow storm. Some of us are still without potable water. The state has to fix the way it manages its electrical grid to avoid a repeat of what transpired during the Storm of 2021.

Still, the Legislature every other year spends too much valuable time dawdling and discussing matters that have no prayer of becoming law. I get that we don’t pay our legislators much money when they meet in Austin every odd-numbered year, but for crying out loud, I just wish they would take all the time they have available working for the general public good.

International news, national news

It’s a ‘crisis’ for sure

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

For those who think I am a Joe Biden suck-up who just cannot criticize the new president, here’s flash for you …

I believe President Biden misread and underestimated the impact of his immigration policy on our southern border and is now paying the price for allowing a full-blown crisis to develop.

Were I able to offer face-to-face advice to the president prior to his taking office, I would have said that his kinder/gentler immigration policy is going to entice immigrants into this country — and that he had better be prepared to handle the influx of human beings seeking a better life than the one they are leaving behind.

He didn’t do that.

To be sure, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is trying to assure the nation that the Biden administration has this matter under control, and that DHS and others intend to treat immigrants humanely. I want to believe Mayorkas.

The Biden approach to immigration issues presents a polar opposite strategy from what occurred during the Donald Trump years. Trump sought to round up everyone who was here illegally and deport them poste-haste back to wherever they came from. He separated children from their parents in what has been vilified as an act of abject cruelty.

Joe Biden took office promising a softer approach than the one offered by Donald Trump. If I was living in a Latin American nation and wanted to escape poverty, crime and repression for a new life in the U.S., you’re damn right I would do what I could to get there. If I was sending that message out to the world, which is what President Biden did, then I certainly would have thought out a strategy to deal with an expected tide of new arrivals.

President Biden needs to get both arms wrapped tightly around this matter in a major hurry. I am going to trust in the president’s desire to do right by those who seek entry into the Land of the Free. I also am going to implore him to stop worrying about what to call what is happening along our border.

It’s more than a “challenge,” Mr. President. It’s a “crisis.”