Monthly Archives: November 2021

media news

What about other issues, doc?

1 Comment

Maybe I’m a bit slow on the uptake, or am not paying close enough attention.

Still, I am wondering why the man who represents the congressional district I once called home spends so much of his Twitter energy blasting the daylights out of President Biden with ad hominem attacks.

Rep. Ronny Jackson, the Republican former Navy admiral and medical doctor, doesn’t seem too interested in tweeting policy matters related to the Texas Panhandle, where he moved more than a year ago to run for the office he now occupies.

The only tweets I see from this clown concern Biden’s mental snap. Jackson doesn’t think the president is up to the job and he keeps saying so — incessantly — through the social medium.

What the hell?

This goofball ought to direct some of his waking hours to legislating on behalf of the victims, ‘er voters, who sent him to office.

Just for grins and giggles, I took a look at the Twitter feed of my current congressman, Republican Van Taylor of Plano.

Taylor also is critical of the president, but he bases his criticism on issues and doesn’t lambaste Biden with baseless assertions that seek to sow doubt about his ability to do the job to which he was elected.

Hey, I get that presidents deserve to be criticized when issues present themselves. I just get a serious sense that Rep. Taylor is more dialed in to the needs and concerns of his constituents than Rep. Jackson, who’s dedicated to making as much useless noise as he can while he sits in Congress.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Hoping the grid holds up

My ol’ trick knee is acting up again.

It’s throbbing and telling me I ought to worry about whether the Texas electrical grid is going to hold up if we get another winter blast like the one that paralyzed us this past February.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid froze up. It sent millions of Texas households — including ours — into the dark while the temperature hovered near or below zero. We came through OK. Our water supply in Princeton shut down for a little while, but that recovered, too.

The Legislature was supposed to hustle to ensure that ERCOT’s grid was winterized to prevent future catastrophes. I have not heard much from lawmakers about what they did to make sure that the “reliability” of ERCOT holds up this coming winter.

I wonder aloud about this because the temperatures are falling in North Texas, as they are expected to do. We’re well into autumn and the first day of winter is only about five weeks away.

The trick knee, though, keeps me wondering whether the state has done what it was supposed to do or whether it was too worried about banning abortion and suppressing Texans’ ability to vote.

We’ve got some pressing issues out here, lawmakers. Make damn sure you pay attention to us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Did POTUS take a beating?

1 Comment

Let’s flash back for a moment about 30 years to the presidency of George H.W. Bush.

Going back that far, every new president suffered political setbacks in Virginia and New Jersey, meaning that the governors races in those states went to the winner from the opposing party.

Bush 41, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all suffered those embarrassments.

Joe Biden on Tuesday only suffered half of it. Virginia went from Democrat to Republican. New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, managed to win re-election.

Now, does this lessen the impact of this bellwether election? Is President Biden’s agenda now in the clear? Hardly.

It’s just that the president somehow managed to avoid the embarrassment that befell his five predecessors who saw the governorships in those key states flip from their own party to the party on the other side.

It’s complicated. Yes?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

More on voter cards …

I want to make a final brief point about the uselessness of voter registration cards in the great state of Texas.

As I noted already, the polling place judges don’t ask to see them when we vote. What’s more, when we vote in primary elections, we aren’t identified either as Democrat or Republican when we walk into the polling place. We show the polling judge our photo identification; that’s good enough!

We select the party primary where we intend to vote the moment we walk into the balloting station. Poll judges used to stamp my card “Democrat” or “Republican,” depending on the primary I chose; they haven’t done so in years. Oh, by the way, I voted in GOP primaries often when we lived in the Texas Panhandle because I wanted to have a voice in key local races, which invariably involved only the Republican Party primary.

The open primary system we have in Texas, therefore, renders voter registration cards unnecessary.

So, why do we have ’em? I am at a loss to explain why.

Texas can save a bundle of cash every other year by dispensing with printing voter registration cards. Surely it costs the state, oh, a million or two bucks to print these things out.

When we register to vote with the county clerk’s office, our name and address are entered into a computer system. It is kept in the data base and then accessed on primary or general election day.

Bingo! No need for the registration card.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

JFK Jr.: Where is he?

I cannot wipe the derisive sneer off my face as I read this item in the Dallas Morning News.

Some QAnon supporters — you know who those clowns are, right? — gathered in downtown Dallas earlier this week expecting to see the return of John F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the 35th president who was assassinated in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.

JFK Jr. died in a plane crash in 1999, but the QAnon goons think he’s been hiding all this time. They suggest his return will signal the re-emergence also of Donald J. Trump and that the 45th POTUS is going to run again for the White House in 2024.

Truly astounding … don’t you think? If not, well, you should think so!

I believe it is the stuff of loony bins, of psych wards, of rubber rooms, man!

Here, though, is the truly amazing aspect of QAnon nut jobs: some of them actually get elected to important public offices, such as in Congress. Yep. It has happened. It might happen again in 2022 and beyond.

QAnon supporters gather in downtown Dallas expecting JFK Jr. to reappear (dallasnews.com)

Spoiler alert: John F. Kennedy Jr. is as dead as his father. He ain’t coming back. Not ever.

I cannot speak to whether the former Liar in Chief is going to make a comeback. I am inclined to doubt that he will make the attempt, that all this blustering is for show and for “ratings.”

As for QAnon, I will keep sneering derisively at its idiocy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, medical news

Vaccines make me smug

2 Comments

I am feeling a bit smug these days.

It’s all because of the vaccines I have received. Both doses of the anti-COVID vaccine have been injected into my left arm. I also have received the booster shot. They’re all Pfizer medications.

So, I am fully vaccinated … and then some!

It’s the smugness I am resisting with all my might. I am still masking up when I walk into strange indoor venues. This afternoon, for example, we walked into a church lobby to cast our votes for Princeton city council, school board and Texas constitutional amendment issues. We didn’t see masks on too many other voters but, by golly, we are taking no chances.

We keep hearing about “fully vaccinated” individuals testing positive for the COVID virus. Neither of us wants that to occur in our house. So, we are taking measures to avoid exposure to a potentially killer virus.

Still, the smugness I am feeling is a tough obstacle to overcome.

I will stay vigilant against the virus. Smugness be damned!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

School races take on new urgency

We just cast our ballots for municipal offices and a citywide resolution in Princeton, Texas, along with amendments to the Texas Constitution … as well as for seats on the Princeton Independent School District board of trustees.

It’s the latter race that causes me some angst and potential worry. Yes, I worry about the Princeton ISD and whether our local school district is going to frolic down the path of examining “critical race theory” and examining textbooks that examine seedier portions of our national history.

I do not want that to happen in Princeton.

We are a rapidly growing community full of new families with small children, many of whom live in our subdivision that happens to next to a newly built elementary school.

The critical race theory discussion troubles me in one key aspect. It is that right wingers fear CRT because it allows teachers to instruct our children about our nation’s single greatest sin: the enslavement of human beings and the associated racism, a good bit of which remains to this day.

I do not want my school board members to shy away from teaching our children about that facet of our nation’s history. Yes, we live in a great nation, arguably the greatest ever created. Greatness, though, does not preclude mistakes along the way.

Let us not forgo teaching our children about those mistakes and the measures we have taken to — in the words of our nation’s founders — seek to create and preserve a “more perfect Union.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

187 minutes of hell …

It took Donald J. Trump more than three hours after the rioters stormed the Capitol Building — at his urging — to more or less call them off.

The then-POTUS did so while expressing his “love” for them and while extolling that they are “special people.”

Key aides were imploring Trump to call off the rioters on 1/6. He resisted. He didn’t do or say a single damn thing to stave off the rioters. Then came that ghastly “we love you” plea 187 minutes after it began to men and women who had defecated on the floor of the Senate, beaten through windows, injured several Capitol Police officers.

They were chanting their desire to “Hang Mike Pence!” and went looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by yelling “Nancy … where are you?”

Unbelievable. Un-bleeping-believable!

But it happened. We know it now through some extraordinary reporting by the Washington Post.

To think there remains a segment of our nation’s citizenry who buy into the crap peddled by the former Liar in Chief.

God help us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

environmental news

POTUS reverses predecessor’s denial

1 Comment

Joe Biden sees climate change as an existential threat to the nation and the world.

Donald Trump called it, among other things, a “hoax,” a figment of the “fake media” and its obsession with leftist policies.

Biden is correct. His predecessor is wrong. Biden was correct to return the United States to the Paris Climate Accord; Trump was wrong to pull us out the accords in 2017.

Which is why many of us are applauding President Biden’s decision to return to the climate change negotiating table and to hammer out potential solutions to what the scientific community has concluded: that humankind’s contribution to the changing world climate compels it to seek solutions.

Biden selected former Secretary of State John Kerry to serve as the administration’s spokesman on climate change issues. He brought Kerry with him to Glasgow to talk with other world leaders about the United States’ potential role in seeking answers to the crisis.

Indeed, Kerry is no novice at this level of international diplomacy. He served for four years as chief diplomat during the Obama administration. Prior to that he served in the U.S. Senate, ran for president in 2004 and distinguished himself as an articulate purveyor of national policy.

So, the United States is back in the climate change game.

That, I daresay, is a very good thing for the future of the planet. Or at least it could be a good thing if the industrialized world pulls its collective head out and gets busy seeking solutions.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Abortion = heartburn

There’s no denying the fact that abortion as a political issue gives me serious angst that borders on heartburn.

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually is set to rule on whether Texas highly restrictive anti-abortion law passes constitutional muster. The smart money says the court, with its 6 to 3 conservative majority, is likely to say that the state can ban abortions at any period after the sixth week of pregnancy.

I believe the court would make a grievous mistake if that’s the ruling it delivers.

Does that make me “pro-abortion?” No. Let me rephrase that: Hell no. It doesn’t nothing of the sort. I consider myself to be pro-life. Why? Because I cannot — and never would — counsel a woman to get an abortion were she to ask for my counsel on that matter. Nor can I sanction government to mandate that a woman cannot make that choice herself after counseling with her partner, her faith leader, her deity, her conscience.

That decision is a woman’s alone! Period. End of discussion.

The court well could rule that the 1973 Roe v. Wade landmark decision — another case emanating out of Texas — is no longer “the law of the land,” or is “settled law.” Earlier SCOTUS decisions have upheld Roe v. Wade. This one well could upset that legal precedent.

It would be a mistake.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com