Monthly Archives: September 2021

national news

Bring on the differences!

I am striking a note or two for ideological diversity.

We live in a polarized, deeply divided nation these days. The polarization is being driven by politicians in Washington, in our state capitals, even at our county courthouses; I’ll give our city halls a pass because almost all of them are non-partisan in nature and the pols we elect to municipal government are ostensibly not driven by partisan political concerns.

I have my bias. Others have theirs. They differ. The folks who hold differing biases are getting pretty darn nasty.

However, all that acknowledged, I do not want everyone to agree with me. I surely don’t want everyone to agree with those who disagree with me. Back to my point about personal agreement. We should live in a nation full of ideological diversity and at the moment, oh brother, we are, um … diversified.

A world where everyone thinks the same — even if they agree with little ol’ me — would be a boring world for certain.

Who wants to be bored to sleep? Not me. I have too much to do!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin has it right, strange as that seems

Leave it to Russian strongman/dictator/killer Vladimir Putin to put our Afghan War effort into some sort of semi-reasonable and rational perspective.

“The result is one tragedy, one loss… American troops were present in this region, and for twenty years they tried to civilize people, and to introduce their own norms and standards of life in the broadest sense… including in the political organization of society,” Putin said. “The result is zero, if not to say that it is negative.”

He should know. Putin was a big-time spymaster while Russia was known as the Soviet Union, and during the time the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan to seek to defeat those who opposed the Marxist regime that ran the country in the1980s.

Putin: U.S. Has Nothing, “Zilch” To Show For 20 Years Of Occupation Of Afghanistan | Video | RealClearPolitics

The communists fared no better than our forces did during the 20 years Americans fought there.

Which to my way of thinking tells me that President Biden made the right call when he ended our military engagement.

Hmm. Imagine that. President Biden and Vlad Putin agreeing on something. Who knew?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Yep, it’s still a man’s world

There can be no doubt about it, that it’s still a man’s world out there.

How do I know that?

Consider a new law that took effect in Texas on the First of September. It creates a criminal act for a woman who receives an abortion any time after her sixth week of pregnancy.Ā  Furthermore, the law makes no exceptions for women who are raped or impregnated by someone in an incestuous encounter.

Ah, but what the rapist or the lecherous uncle or brother or father who does the deed that gets the woman in trouble? What happens to him?

There is no apparent connection between the abortion and the source of the pregnancy, meaning that a rapist faces no sterner penalty if he is convicted of the crime.

My only thought at this stage of the discussion is that if the state is going to make it a crime against a doctor and the woman to make a life-changing decision such as terminating a pregnancy, then the state ought to throw the book at the beast who rapes a woman and forces her to make that decision in the first place.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, Uncategorized

Sen. Manchin is making me crazy

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin seems to know how powerful he is, being an influential “moderate Democratic member” of the Senate.

He is flexing his political muscle with glee.

Manchin speaks in favor of the infrastructure plan that puts a gleam in President Biden’s eye … and now he says Congress and the president need to “pause” on the effort to spend $3.5 trillion to fix our nation’s roads, bridges, rails, airports, ship channels, Internet and other matters.

Why? Because it’s too costly. Manchin, the cagey West Virginian, now stands as the one senator who can put the whole damn thing into dire jeopardy.

Which it is, Sen. Manchin? It looks to me, sitting out here in the peanut gallery, that Manchin is using his muscle to satisfy a politician’s ego.

That would be his own.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Taliban ‘declare victory’

It is worth asking: Will the Taliban, who have “declared victory” against the United States, assume a more charitable relationship with their former battlefield adversary … in the manner that Vietnamese have done with former American servicemen and women?

Our military engagement in Afghanistan has ended. The Taliban have pranced around Kabul and other cities proclaiming that they “defeated” the United States. I get how they can make that declaration, even though their battlefield losses were horrific during the 20 years we fought them. Then again, so were the Vietnamese pounded on the battlefield back then, too. Yet they persevered and were able assume control of a government we fought to defend and preserve.

The Taliban have declared victory. Now they must reckon with a country freefalling into chaos (msn.com)

I don’t know about any parallels between then and now. The Taliban are driven by a deep religious fervor steeped in Islamic fundamentalism. The North Vietnamese were driven by a communist ideology that had nothing to do with religion.Ā 

In 1989, I had the honor of returning to Vietnam 20 years after I reported for duty in that long-ago war. The editors with whom I was traveling and I flew from Bangkok to Hanoi for the first leg of our Vietnam tour. We then flew a few days later from Hanoi to what once was known as Saigon but is now called Ho Chi Minh City … named after Uncle Ho.

I remember getting off the plane, boarding a bus and then riding to our hotel. I got off the bus and was greeted — along with my traveling companions — by a gentlemen who asked some of us if we had served there during the Vietnam War. Some of us said “yes,” to which the gentleman said — while smiling broadly — “Welcome back to our country.”Ā 

I found that to be a moving welcome and it portended the kind of relationships we were able to build during our brief time touring Vietnam.

Will any of that be available over time to returning Afghan War vets? Time will tell. I hope for their sake they are able to return to a country that so saw much hell over the span of time we fought there.

That will depend, of course, on whether the Taliban can set aside their religious fervor. Therein lies a fundamental difference between then and now.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Seat belts, stop lights and now masks

Government makes us do all kinds of things that some of us would rather not do.

It makes us wear seat belts while driving or riding in a motor vehicle.

We stop at red lights that signal us to stop … at least most of us do it.

We obey orders not to smoke cigarettes, cigars or pipes indoors.

Now the government at some levels wants us to wear masks when we enter enclosed spaces. Why? To protect us against a killer virus, the COVID 19 and its variants.

What in the name of sanity is wrong with following that order, too?

To me, there’s nothing wrong with it. Do I like donning a mask, fishing for it out of some compartment in my vehicle? No. I don’t … but I do it anyway!

Wear a damn mask! It will save your life and could save the lives of those around you … including those you love dearly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

‘My body, my choice’

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Think about yet another example of right-wing hypocrisy for just a moment.

The conservative political movement has dismissed for decades progressives’ mantra that “my body, my choice” defined their opposition to government mandates banning abortion. They insisted that government had every right to “protect the rights of the unborn.”

Oh, but wait! Now we hear conservatives saying “my body, my choice” as they resist efforts to allow governmental mandates to get vaccinated against a disease that could kill them deader than dead.Ā Government, in this instance, is seeking to protect the lives and the health of those who walk among us.

So, which is it, right-wingers?

Hypocrisy is just so damn ugly. Don’t you think?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Service ‘not in vain’

A critical point I sought to make in an earlier blog post needs to be buttressed a bit given the criticism that continues to pour in over the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley has informed us what many of us already knew. Which was that the service of the men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq “was not in vain.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said this about our withdrawal from the field of battle: “We have just concluded the largest air evacuation of civilians in American history. It was heroic. It was historic.”

To say these individuals “died in vain” is to slather a hideous insult over the heroism many of them displayed. I am one proud American veteran who will not sit still while others suggest that the service performed in Iraq and Afghanistan was flushed away, that it was all for naught.

No one ā€˜dies in vainā€™ fighting for oneā€™s country | High Plains Blogger

The men and women of our armed forces followed lawful orders from the top of the chain of command. They served through four commanders in chief. They fought hard and they fought with valor. Some of them received our nation’s highest military commendations, including the Medal of Honor. Do we dare suggest that these recipients performed their heroic acts “in vain”? Or that their comrades died in vain?

“Your service mattered, and it was not in vain,” Gen. Milley said. “We will continue to evacuate American citizens under the leadership of the Department of State as this mission has now transitioned from a military mission to a diplomatic mission.”

And so the mission continues, but in a different form.

I participated for a time in a war that didn’t end well for the United States of America. The Vietnam War ended with chaos, confusion and panic. Yes, there were those who said the 58,000 Americans who died in that war perished “in vain.” They, too, were as wrong as they could be.

Their service mattered as well. As did those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. They all have earned our nation’s gratitude.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

military news

Rumor hot spots keep flaring

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As the United States moves into a post-war world now that it has pulled out of Afghanistan, the Biden administration is left to extinguish right-wing-generated rumor-mill hot spots.

Such as the one about us supposedly leaving $83 billion worth of military equipment for the Taliban to use, possibly against Americans or our allies.

The rumor is false.

That won’t stem the fake news coming from the mouths of conservative politicians and media personalities. They keep harping on the equipment left behind. They suggest that the Taliban is now the second-best equipped military force in the world — behind the U.S. of A.

According to The Associated Press:

Their $85 billion figure resembles a number from a July 30Ā quarterly reportĀ from SIGAR, which outlined that the U.S. has invested about $83 billion to build, train and equip Afghan security forces since 2001.

Yet that funding included troop pay, training, operations and infrastructure along with equipment and transportation over two decades, according to SIGAR reports and Dan Grazier, a defense policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight.

ā€œWe did spend well over $80 billion in assistance to the Afghan security forces,ā€ Grazier said. ā€œBut thatā€™s not all equipment costs.ā€

In fact, only about $18 billion of that sum went toward equipping Afghan forces between 2002 and 2018, a June 2019 SIGARĀ reportĀ showed.

FACT FOCUS: Trump, others wrong on US gear left with Taliban (msn.com)

Is that the end of it? Hardly. It only goes to underscore the public-relations battle that awaits the Biden team as it tries to keep this withdrawal in its proper perspective.

medical news

Texas abortion law: seriously flawed

Some laws are easy to defend.

The newly enacted law banning virtually all abortions in Texas is equally easy to condemn. I will do so with this brief post.

The law that took effect at midnight is among the most restrictive state laws in the United States. It bans abortions as early as six weeks after conception. It makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

Hmm. Think about that one. Many women — perhaps even most women — don’t even know they are pregnant until well after that time frame. What in the world do they do if (a) they are raped or (b) they are impregnated in an incestuous encounter or (c) their doctor determines that the baby they are carrying has serious health issues?

This issue at one important level does give me fits. I could not advise a woman to get an abortion. However, I do not believe government should impose laws that restrict or virtually eliminate a woman’s right to make that choice for herself. She should consult with her partner, her doctor, her faith leader and her god. These decisions are not in the realm of pompous politicians — so many of them males — who make pious pronouncements about the “sanctity of life.”

I will add, too, that many of these pols get hideously stingy with public money when the need arises for the government to care for children brought into this world.

I will harken back to an adage that President Clinton once said about abortion. He said it should remain legal, but that it should “become rare.” I fear now what women might do if they become desperate to terminate a pregnancy … and how much harm they will do to themselves.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com