Monthly Archives: February 2022

national news, political news

What’s happening to GOP?

You may choose to believe or disbelieve what I am about to say; it matters not one bit to me, but I just feel the need to ask: What in the world is happening to the Republican Party.

I do not detest all Republicans. Some of my better friends belong to that political party. FYI, my actual “best friends,” and I don’t count many of them, do not belong to the once-great party. We are friends for reasons that have nothing to do with politics.

I count many Republicans among those with whom I have good relationships. They are healthy. Many of my GOP friends happen to be active politicians. Some of them are conservative pols. Others of them are more moderate. One of them, a Texas state senator from Amarillo, is leaving the Legislature at the end of the year and I consider Kel Seliger’s departure a huge loss for the party.

Which brings me to the point. The departure of so many moderate Republican pols suggests to me that the nut-job, fruitcake, Donald Trump cultists are seizing control of the party that once stood for limited government, fiscal responsibility, equal rights for all Americans has become a cabal of cult followers who adhere to the whims and machinations of an individual. You know about whom I am referring, right?

Moderate GOP pols are fleeing Congress. They are leaving state legislatures. My fear is that they are being replaced in these important offices by goofballs and nut jobs, slobbering QAnon followers and those who adhere to The Big Lie perpetuated by the Liar in Chief.

This is a dark time in American political history.

I am going to keep looking for the light.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

education news, State news

Tenure war in Texas?

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has found a topic on which he wants to run for re-election. He wants to demonize college professors who dare teach their students about elements of U.S. history that include slavery and racist efforts to subjugate American citizens on the basis of their skin color.

He vows to eliminate tenure for those professors who teach what is called “critical race theory.” His first target will be new hires at Texas public colleges and universities. He also threatens to broaden his fight to include tenured professors; he might seek to strip them of their tenure status.

All of this hysteria makes me shake my noggin.

The Texas Tribune reports:

Conservatives over the past year have used “critical race theory” as a broad label to attack progressive teachings and books in college and K-12 schools that address race and gender.

Tenure is an indefinite appointment for university faculty that can only be terminated under extraordinary circumstances. Academics said Friday that tenure is intended to protect faculty and academic freedom from exactly the kind of politicization being waged by Patrick.

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/18/dan-patrick-texas-tenure-critical-race-theory/

CRT is a red herring. Pure and simple. I find nothing wrong with teaching students about the aspects of our history that include the inhumane treatment our government leveled against Americans only because they were black, or brown, or anyone who isn’t white.

Yet such curricula have been labeled by conservatives — such as Dan Patrick — as being “anti-American,” or that it teaches young students to “hate America.”

Good grief! It doesn’t do anything of the sort.

Patrick, thus, has become the latest demagogue to seek to make political hay out of a legitimate field of academic study.

Disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news, political news

National Archives: Trump broke the law

Whenever I think of organizations prone to be subjected to partisan political pressure, among the last of them I think of is the National Archives, the keeper of all things official that emanate from the federal government.

So … when the National Archives issues a statement that Donald J. Trump broke the law when he hustled classified documents out of the White House and stashed them at his glitzy resort in south Florida, well, that’s a big bit of news.

Furthermore, think of the irony of this revelation. Didn’t the GOP presidential nominee, Trump, accuse Hillary Clinton of similar if not identical crimes while campaigning against her in 2016?

The National Archives has sent the matter to the Department of Justice for review and possible criminal referral.

Hmm. Looks to me like the walls are closing in on the ex-president.

According to The Associated Press:

Federal law bars the removal of classified documents to unauthorized locations, though it is possible that Trump could try to argue that, as president, he was the ultimate declassification authority.

No matter the legal risk, it exposes him to charges of hypocrisy given his relentless attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. The FBI investigated but ultimately did not recommend charges.

National Archives: Trump took classified items to Mar-a-Lago (msn.com)

Trump’s carelessness about national security matters have become almost legendary during his time as president and as a candidate for the highest office in the land. Recall, for instance, how he revealed some national secrets to Russians government officials visiting him in the Oval Office.

The former Moron in Chief, though, apparently has invited “Lock him up!” chants if what the National Archives alleges proves true. As for the DOJ probe, my gut tells me that the FBI has plenty of grist on which it can chew.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Mitt was right about Russia

My sense of fair play compels me to offer an apology to 2012 Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who once made a declaration that drew scorn from those of us who opposed his election to the presidency.

Romney, now the junior U.S. senator from Utah, declared during that campaign that Russia posed “the greatest geopolitical threat” to the United States. Do you recall the howls of derision from Democrats and others on the left? Why, how could Romney be so, um, naive? So out of touch? So, so … wrong?

Greater threats seemed at the time to lie in places like the Middle East, among terrorist groups intent on destroying “the Great Satan.” So, we laughed off Mitt Romney’s absurd notion about Russia.

Now, though, he seems prescient. Russia has emerged as a profound threat to the entire world. Certainly to neighboring countries, such as, oh, Ukraine and Belarus. And Georgia. And the Baltic States.

The Russians are engaging in cyber warfare against the rest of the world. They interfered in our 2016 presidential election, sought to do it again in 2020. They might try yet again in 2024.

Donald Trump, the president who received help from the Russians in ’16, stood next to Russian killer Vladimir Putin and endorsed his denial that the Russian interfered in our election. He and Putin became BFFs. Putin played Trump like a fiddle.

Mitt was right about Russia. I won’t cry myself to sleep over being wrong in 2012. I just want to acknowledge that Romney told us the truth when he ran for POTUS but a lot of us weren’t yet ready to hear it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Awaiting the SOTU

Let’s look ahead — shall we? — to President Biden’s first State of the Union speech. He’ll get to stand before a joint session of Congress and give them, and the nation, a report on the health and well-being of the nation he governs.

It is set for March 1.

These events have become sort of a handicapping exercise. Pundits will be offering views on how many members of Congress stand and applaud at the appropriate times.

Although I intend to watch the president deliver his speech, I am approaching that date with a bit of apprehension. We live in highly contentious times. Republicans seem to detest the Democratic president. Many members of the GOP congressional caucus, for instance, haven’t even accepted the fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Many of the nut jobs within the Republican caucus have made speeches endorsing Donald J. Trump’s Big Lie about the vote fraud that did not exist.

How will those idiots react to anything Biden says? How many of them will even attend the SOTU? Might we hear a “You lie!” insult coming from the GOP side the way we did when President Obama delivered an SOTU years ago?

I will approach this upcoming event with bit of trepidation. I hope Congress — men and women on both sides of the great divide — will treat President Biden with all due respect. Frankly, given the madness that seems to permeate the thick skulls of many within the GOP caucus, I do have some doubt over the kind of reception the president is going to receive.

Please, GOP members, prove my concerns to be without merit.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Waiting on an answer

Perhaps you have experienced as well a frustration I am about to express, which deals with a public official’s apparent refusal to provide a direct answer to a direct question.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has been running a re-election campaign ad in which he declares that he “distributed $3 billion” to buttress the state’s border security. Hegar, therefore, is taking direct credit for acting under his own discretion to spend the money to secure our border. The Republican officeholder, quite naturally, is critical of the nation’s top Democrat, President Biden, over federal border policies.

My question went to the head of the comptroller’s media relations office. I sent an email and the question is this: Does Comptroller Hegar have the discretion to distribute $3 billion for border security as he sees fit, which he implies in his campaign ad, or is that distribution mandated by the Legislature and/or the governor? The media guy has gotten two messages from me. No answer.

I don’t know why he hasn’t answered my question. I believe it is clear and concise. All he has to do is say “yes” or “no,” if he doesn’t want to spend any time explaining himself or the state agency’s policy.

My concern about Hegar’s ad is that it might be misleading. In fact, I believe it is misleading. You see, the Legislature appropriates money and then directs agency heads — even those elected to their office — to spend it according to what the legislation prescribes. So, when Glenn Hegar tells TV viewers that he “distributed” the money, he leaves the impression that he has sole authority to spend the money as he sees fit. It’s all part of the GOP narrative I keep hearing played out during this primary election season: Republican officials are doing the job that the feds are supposed to be doing; therefore, the message goes, Joe Biden is failing at his job. In fact, Hegar’s ad opens with that very statement, that “Biden is failing.”

Candidates for Texas attorney general are saying it, too, even though the AG is mainly a civil litigator. They’re all proclaiming how they’re going to get tough on criminals crossing the border into Texas “illegally,” of course, to do harm to helpless Texans who will fall victim to their criminal intent.

Well, I’ll be patient and wait this one out. I just find it hilarious that the guy who serves as the state’s top bean counter would portray himself as a tough-as-nails crime fighter.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Nothing ‘legit’ about violent protest

As one American patriot who believes in civil disobedience, I feel the need to set the record straight on why the 1/6 riot and all those incidents of violence aboard commercial aircraft are so damn disturbing.

There is not a single, solitary aspect of either event that one can describe as “civil disobedience.” The Republican National Committee recently issued a statement calling the 1/6 insurrection an expression of “legitimate political discourse.” I have participated in many such actual events that featured “legitimate political discourse.” None of them bore a shred of resemblance to the violence that erupted on Capitol Hill that day.

And yet, that nonsense came from RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, who sought to tamp down the description of the event. She and other Republicans are uncomfortable with calling it an insurrection. However, to my eyes that is precisely what it was; the rioters sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. If that isn’t an insurrection, then the term has no meaning whatsoever.

Indeed, the Justice Department has indicted the ring leaders of the riot on a charge of “conspiracy to commit sedition,” which bears no significant difference to the insurrection term that others are throwing around.

The Justice Department has received a request from aviation regulators to allow a permanent ban on air passengers who attack flight crews or fellow passengers while their aircraft is in flight. DOJ should follow the recommendation and allow the permanent ban on those who are accused of such hideous mayhem at 30,000 feet above the Earth’s surface.

A group of eight GOP U.S. senators doesn’t want those miscreants banned. They contend the idiots are expressing legitimate concerns about mask mandates on commercial aircraft. Bullsh**! They are putting others in potentially mortal danger by engaging in fistfights with flight attendants or, in at least one case, by trying to open one of the fuselage doors as the aircraft is at cruising altitude.

Civil disobedience? My ass!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Ban ’em from airlines!

Count me as one American who believes the Federal Aviation Administration should push hard for federal legislation that would ban unruly passengers from all domestic commercial air travel.

The FAA has referred 80 cases to the FBI and has asked Congress for legislative remedies to deter future passengers from disrupting flights and putting all their fellow passengers in potential dire peril while on board commercial aircraft.

The 80 cases represent all incidents that have occurred in 2022, which just arrived about six weeks ago. The rate of these incidents is alarming in the extreme.

What has caused the surge in these cases? Hmm. Let’s think about this. Oh, mask mandates have been the cause for more than two-thirds of the incidents. Airlines order passengers to mask up; some passengers are resisting; fights break out on aircraft in mid-air. One flight attendant suffered severe facial injuries after being punched by a passenger.

Here, though, is where this story gets bizarre. Eight Republican U.S. senators have objected to any federal legislation. They have signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to forgo the criminal referral. They contend foolishly that any federal ban would infringe on Americans’ right to protest mask mandates. How absurd and stupid can these senators get?

I happen to believe in civil disobedience. However, there can be no way in this world you can consider a physical attack on another human being to be “civil.” These attacks, which have spiraled since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, put hundreds of innocent bystanders in potentially mortal danger. If someone, then, is accused and convicted of attacking a flight attendant or of trying to open an airplane door in mid-flight — which did occur in one incident — then by all means they should be banned from traveling via commercial airlines … for the rest of their life!

This form of mayhem has to stop. Thus, the FAA is correct to seek ways to deter future incidents from erupting at 30,000 feet.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Stand tall, Liz Cheney

Liz Cheney has become the living, breathing face and voice of what is wrong with today’s Republican Party, and I want to salute her for the stance she has taken in the ongoing search for a cure to the assault we have witnessed on our democratic process.

Liz Cheney is as conservative a Republican as one can find in the U.S. Congress. She represents a sparsely populated state in the Mountain West, Wyoming, and has voted consistently conservative during the years she has served in the U.S. House of Representatives.

She is no Republican In Name Only. Far from it. She is the antithesis of what I consider to be the current RINOs who populate the once-great political party. She is the real deal.

Her “crime” in the eyes of the Donald Trump cultists is that she has called out the former president for the acts of disloyalty he has displayed. He has violated the oath he took when he became president in 2017. Liz Cheney now serves on the House select committee that seeks to find the truth behind the cause and effect of the 1/6 insurrection that Trump incited with that speech on The Ellipse.

That is a non-starter for the cultists, but for demonstrating that she is loyal to the oath that Trump has betrayed she now has become persona non grata within her party. The Wyoming GOP has censured her. The Republican National Committee has scolded her publicly, along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the other Republican serving on the House 1/6 committee.

Liz Cheney has earned this salute only because she is doing the job she swore an oath to do faithfully. In normal times, this loyalty to her oath wouldn’t be such a big deal. These are not normal times. Liz Cheney is performing an act of political courage.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news, political news

How did this guy get elected?

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

As I watch the congressional probe into 1/6 trudge along — hopefully to a constructive conclusion — and then listen to the focus of that probe, the 45th POTUS, I have come to an inescapable finding.

It is that I will go to my grave wondering how in the name of political wisdom did Donald J. Trump ever get elected president of the United States in first place. And how in the name of all that is sane and rational did this guy ever avoid getting tossed out of office on his oversized backside after the House of Reps impeached him twice?

He preaches The Big Lie about the 2020 election. His cult followers cheer him on. Trump teases them with hints about possibly running again in 2024 in an astonishing bid to get elected a second time to an office he had no business at all ever occupying even one time.

I read this idiot’s comments, given that I prefer to read them than listen to the sound of his voice. I then wonder: What the hell is this guy saying?

The list of treachery, transgressions and outright treason are too numerous to check off here. You know what they are, what they entail, and you know of the damage they have done individually and collectively to our cherished system of representative democracy.

Trump’s election in 2016 is a case study of a politician benefiting from astonishing luck. The popular phrase du jour of that election cycle was that Trump managed to draw “an inside straight,” while winning the Electoral College and losing the actual vote by 3 million ballots to Hillary Rodham Clinton. I have read many accounts over the years since that fluke victory that Trump never believed he would win. When he did win, he was caught flat-footed, with no clue on how to form a government, let alone actually know how to govern.

Four years later, he got drummed out of office by a seasoned politician. He never accepted Joe Biden’s victory and skulked out of Washington the day before President Biden’s inaugural.

The 1/6 committee continues to gather information and sworn testimony from those who witnessed the disgraced ex-POTUS on the day of the traitorous riot on 1/6. We’re getting bits of info here and there about revelations on fake electors seeking to overturn the legitimate election results; about Trump sitting in the White House residence cheering on the rioting traitors; about the ex-POTUS considering blanket pardons for all the scoundrels who pooped on Capitol floors while shouting out their desire to find and “hang” VP Mike Pence.

There is much more to chronicle. I’ll leave it to you to piece together all that you have seen and heard from this moron.

I always have expected us to elect the best among us to public office. To think that one of the very worst among us managed to blunder and bumble his way into the White House simply defies my ability to explain it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com