Monthly Archives: July 2021

Donald Trump

Most corrupt election? Hardly! It was most secure

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The 45th president of the United States likely did the nation a favor when he ran for the office in 2016.

You’ll recall how he suggested that the vote totals that Hillary Rodham Clinton received were the result of undocumented immigrants voting for her. He was wrong, of course. That didn’t happen. The 2016 election was not corrupt. Clinton, let’s remember, polled about 3 million more votes than the guy who won the election on the basis of his Electoral College victory.

However, the new POTUS then hired an individual — Christopher Krebs — to ensure the next presidential election would be secure. Krebs succeeded famously. The 2020 presidential election has been deemed by many to be the most secure in U.S. history.

So, why is the former Liar in Chief continuing to foment The Big Lie about corruption? Indeed, he fired Krebs after he made that declaration. I am left, then, to wonder why POTUS 45 would dismiss someone who did his job as prescribed.

I suppose it must be that Krebs didn’t deliver some kind of perverted message that suggested that despite the security, the protections against voter fraud that the wrong guy won the election.

Well, the right guy won. POTUS 45 lost a secure election. Yet he continues his quest to get it overturned. It is a shameful demonstration of egomania the likes of which no one likely never has seen in a former POTUS.

The ex-Imbecile in Chief keeps pounding on that drum. He can do so until hell freezes over. It won’t change the outcome, which happened to be a product of the ex-POTUS’s own making.

Go … figure.

national news

Struggle continues …

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Try as I am doing to maintain a forward-looking focus for this blog, events and news reports about the recent past keep pulling me back.

So help me, I do not intend to keep looking in the rear-view mirror.

However, we now have reports that the 45th POTUS pressured the Justice Department to declare the 2020 presidential election to be “corrupt.” Yep, the former A**hole in Chief wanted DOJ to effectively condemn the results per the 45th POTUS’s request.

Oh, my. It appears to me that the great conspiracy concocted by the former Traitor in Chief is unraveling one layer at a time.

This is the kind of thing that the U.S. House select committee assigned to get to the bottom of the events that led up to 1/6 is going to be compelled to examine. In detail. I want it to be unvarnished and unbiased, too.

As for this blog, I will continue to keep a fairly tight rein on it. I won’t be commenting on every single thing involving the ex-Insurrectionist in Chief. He has a boatload of trouble awaiting him.

The Manhattan (N.Y.) district attorney has indicted his company on tax issues. Georgia officials are examining whether he committed election law violations by pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory there; the Justice Department has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to turn the former Tax Cheater in Chief’s tax records over to Congress.

Yep, we have plenty of grist on which to chew.

We also have a president seeking to stem the tide of an outbreak of COVID virus infections; he is trying to put more Americans back to work; Joe Biden is seeking bipartisan approval of a massive infrastructure package.

All of that deserves your blogger’s attention as well. Stick with me. I’ll do my level best to stay focused on the future.

International news

Do right by these translators

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The effort to shield the men and women who worked with our fighting forces in Afghanistan is a noble effort that must be pursued at full throttle.

President Biden’s expedited withdrawal from the Afghan battlefield carries enormous risk. The Taliban will show no mercy to anyone left behind as we pull our forces out of there. Biden’s plan so far seems to lack the coherence one would expect from a seasoned political hand such as the president.

This isn’t the first time our nation has been forced to deal with the future of those who fought with us on these foreign battlefields.

I am thinking at this moment of a fellow I met in Vietnam while visiting that country in 1989. He drove what they call a cyclo — a motor scooter the Vietnamese use as taxi cabs. I hired this fellow for a day and we became friendly during my time in what used to be called Saigon, but which the government calls Ho Chi Minh City.

What made this guy so special is that he served with the 9th Infantry Division during the Vietnam War. He worked with the locals in the Mekong Delta and fought alongside our soldiers. We pulled out of Vietnam in 1973; the South Vietnamese army couldn’t hold off the North Vietnamese, who then conquered the nation in April 1975.

We didn’t rescue my cyclo driver friend. He ended up in what they called a “re-education camp,” a euphemism for prison.

I wrote about this fellow at the time of my visit. I couldn’t use his real name, as he was thought of himself as a marked man in Vietnam. He deserved better than what he got from the government he assisted during that long-ago war.

May the individuals who aided us in Afghanistan get the protection they deserve.

medical news, national news

Too much to expect victory?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It likely was too much to expect a new president, operating with a new medical team would be able to declare victory against the COVID-19 pandemic virus.

President Biden took a lot of credit — perhaps a tad too much of it — for the distribution of vaccines developed by Big Pharma companies. He made bold promises, such as vaccinating 70 % of Americans by the Fourth of July.

It didn’t happen. Then came the emergence of the Delta pandemic variant. More Americans have been getting sick. More of them are dying from the variant.

However, I cannot yet expect a return to the dark days of a year ago. We have come too far from the abyss that opened up when Biden’s predecessor gave short shrift to the consequences of the virus. He said it would vanish magically. It was all “under control,” he said even as thousands of Americans were being stricken daily.

That president lost his re-election bid in 2020. The new guy promised a new day, a new approach, a greater effort to fight the pandemic and rid the nation of its scourge.

We made progress. Then … boom! The Delta variant arrived. Now we’re being advised to mask up again; to maintain “social distancing”; we’re also being advised in the strongest terms possible to get vaccinated.

As disappointing as this setback appears I am not going to despair. I am not going to consign myself and my family to another round of anxiety or misery.

I’ll just have to remind myself that we cannot spike any proverbial footballs until we get eradicate the virus — and all the variants it produces. I remain cautiously optimistic that we’ll get to that finish line … eventually.

What’s more, I will take some measure of comfort knowing that we are being led by a government chief executive who will tell us the truth as we continue this fight.

business news

Let’s see ex-POTUS’s tax returns

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well now, the Department of Justice has spoken, telling the Treasury Department that it must release the long-sought tax returns of the former Cheater in Chief to Congress.

Is that the end of it? Does that mean the former POTUS is going to comply?

Oh-h-h no. Not even close. He’ll find a way to fight it.

The DOJ memo issued today is a reversal of what it declared when POTUS 45 was in office. There’s a new sheriff in town, so now the posture is different.

The memo said the following, according The Hill: In a memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), acting Assistant Attorney General Dawn Johnsen said the Treasury Department was required to defer to the congressional committee.

“The statute at issue here is unambiguous: ‘Upon written request’ of the chairman of one of the three congressional tax committees, the Secretary ‘shall furnish’ the requested tax information to the Committee,” Johnsen wrote in the 39-page memo.

Unambiguous? That means it’s crystal clear.

Justice Department says Trump’s tax returns should be released | TheHill

Many of us have argued all along that presidential political custom should prevail in this matter. Candidates going back to 1976 have revealed to the public their net worth and opened their books to public scrutiny. That held true until POTUS 45 entered the presidential field in 2016. He said he would release them, then he backed out, then he agreed again, then he balked once more.

He said tax gurus are auditing his returns. However, he’s never provided a shred of proof that the Internal Revenue Service in fact is auditing his returns; the IRS, meanwhile, has said that an audit does not preclude a politician from releasing them to the public.

The ex-Liar in Chief insists there is nothing untoward in his returns. Well, alrighty then. If that’s the case, then there should be nothing to hide. Right?

At issue now is whether Congress can review the returns in private and decide whether to make them public.

Speaking only for myself, I want to see it all. We deserve — at the very least — to know whether the ex-Con Man in Chief is as rich as he has bragged of being.

national news, Uncategorized

Will the riot stand as ‘1/6’?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Here is my thought of the moment.

When you mention “9/11,” we know what you’re talking about. Same for when you say “Dec. 7,” as we all know what that date signifies.

My curiosity makes me wonder whether society will recall the insurrection that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021 simply as “1/6.”

I happen to believe that the insurrection ranks right up there with the events of 9/11 and Dec. 7, 1941. They all stand as “dates which will live … in infamy.” 

I will not accept — indeed, I never have accepted — the reluctance among some Americans to refer to the riot of 1/6 as an insurrection. It most certainly was all of that. I consider it a full-out frontal assault on our democratic form of government.

On that day, members of both congressional chambers — led by Vice President Mike Pence — were in the process of certifying the Electoral College totals that resulted in President Biden’s election. The terrorists who stormed the Capitol Building intended to prevent that certification from occurring. My goodness, we have them saying so in recordings taking in real time as the mob stormed the Capitol and killed and injured several individuals who were trying to stop them.

Few events can be identified merely as dates on a calendar.

Let it be noted that on this day moving forward, your friendly blogger will refer to the assault on our democracy as “1/6.” The worst assault on our nation’s Capitol since the War of 1812 ranks right alongside the violence that brought us the war against international terror and the attack that dragged us into the Second World War.

national news

GOP duplicity: simply stunning

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The duplicity and hypocrisy being shown by congressional Republicans is an astonishing sight to those of us who believe in fairness and good government.

The GOP caucus in Congress is hell bent on supporting Republican-controlled state legislatures — such as in Texas — for their effort to curb “widespread voter fraud” that doesn’t exist. The GOP caucus is resisting efforts to approve the John Lewis Voting Rights Act named after the late civil rights icon. Why? They suggest that legislatures have the answer to how to ensure free and fair elections while preventing vote fraud that — I state again — does not exist.

Meanwhile, the same GOP caucus turns its back on the impact of the Jan. 6 insurrection incited by the former Seditionist in Chief. People were killed. They were injured. A mob comprising thousands of domestic terrorists stormed the Capitol Building that day to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

The GOP response? Nothing, man! They have been delivered tangible, visible, visceral proof of extreme malice among the rioters who wanted to “hang” Vice President Pence that day. Meanwhile, the former POTUS did nothing to stop the riot. He reportedly cheered them on from the safety of the White House.

And this doesn’t seem to bother most members of the GOP caucus in Congress? My goodness. I am ashamed of them all.

medical news

Biden goes to war against liars

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden today all but declared war on fellow Americans.

These are the idiots among us who continue to peddle misinformation about the vaccines developed to help fight the COVID-19 virus.

I am rooting for the president to win this war.

He is seeking to stem the infection caused by the Delta variant, an offshoot of the pandemic virus that so far has killed more than 600,000 Americans. The vaccines are safe. They are effective.

And, no, as Biden said, they weren’t “rushed” into production. They were developed rapidly, yes, but under strict federal medical rules and regulations. The “rushed” argument has become a talking point among the anti-vaxxers who concoct reasons to avoid getting inoculated against the virus. President Biden today sought to bat that bogus argument away.

Biden is not sounding like a desperate politician. He is sounding like a pol who is concerned about lies diverting our attention from the truth at hand. It is that virtually all the new Delta variant infections are among those who haven’t been vaccinated against the virus.

To be sure, there are the scattered reports of fully vaccinated Americans being stricken by the variant. However, the refusal among Americans far outpaces those reports and the president today called out those — namely on the right — who continue to foment lies about the vaccines.

President Biden faces a monstrous reality, which happens to be the gullibility of Americans who are too willing to accept the lies and turn their back on the truth. Biden spoke the truth today. He invoked his executive authority to ordering all occupants of federal buildings to be vaccinated; I understand that number of could run into the millions.

That’s all fine with me. Joe Biden inherited a nation in dire medical peril. He had hoped to declare victory against the pandemic. It’s too early for that moment. First, he has to quell the lying and dissembling that is putting Americans at risk.

national news

‘RINOs are ruining America’? Yep, says No. 1 RINO

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The 45th POTUS issued a statement today that says, in part: “Now he’s giving Democrats everything they want and getting nothing in return,” he continued. “No deal is better than a bad deal. Fight for America, not for special interests and Radical Democrats. RINOs are ruining America, right alongside Communist Democrats.”

What drew the wrath of the former Numbskull in Chief? He doesn’t like the infrastructure deal brokered by Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell and President Biden.

Let’s focus briefly on the idea that “RINOs are ruining America … ”

Trump blows fuse over GOP moving forward on infrastructure deal | TheHill

You know what? He’s right. RINOs have co-opted a once-great political party, shaped it into a cult of personality, allowing the one-time commander in chief to say things such as what spewed forth today about the infrastructure deal.

The 45th POTUS isn’t a Republican. He’s a fraudulent con man who masqueraded as a GOP politician when he ran for president in 2016. He is a traitor to the nation he took an oath to protect. How is that? Because he incited the Jan. 6 riot, fomenting The Big Lie about the 2020 election being “stolen” from him.

An actual good-government Republican never — not in a zillion years — would have done the things that this moron did and continues to do.

So, yeah. He’s correct to blame the Republicans In Name Only for “ruining” the country. Indeed, he is one of them.

Sports news

What if she had competed … and failed?

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Simone Biles’s critics are terribly quick to condemn the iconic gymnast’s decision to bow out of the Olympics team competition, contending that she “quit on her team.”

Hmm. Well, let’s ponder something for a moment. Shall we?

Suppose Biles had decided that her mental and emotional issues were no big deal and she competed in the team competition. Then she tanked terribly. Suppose a horrible performance would have cost her team a chance at any medal, let alone the gold medal.

By stepping aside, Simone Biles not only didn’t quit on her team, she well might have enhanced its medal prospects simply by being there to cheer her friends on.

Did she “quit” on her teammates? No … way!

Here’s a thought. Let’s just give this courageous young woman the space she needs to deal head-on with whatever is troubling her.