Monthly Archives: February 2022

DC riot, national news

Wanting end to probe

I understand fully that many millions of Americans are fixated at this moment on the Super Bowl; indeed, I am watching it myself.

Allow me this momentary diversion back into what is transpiring in Washington, D.C. That would be the congressional probe into 1/6, the riot that sought to disrupt the counting of electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election.

You know what happened on 1/6. The mob of traitors stormed the Capitol Building and pooped on the center of our democracy. They sought to murder the vice president of the U.S., Mike Pence, and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

I am ready for the probe to end. I know the House committee chaired by Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has more work to complete. I hope it can continue at the pace it has been working so far. It needs to finish this probe well before the midterm election. I believe it will.

I also believe the committee is going to produce some constructive recommendations on how to prevent such an insurrection from occurring ever again. I will wait with bated breath to see what the panel suggests.

Moreover, I also want Donald Trump to be held accountable for inciting the riot. I know he did; you know he did; Trump knows he did.

One final thought: I don’t give a damn about whatever political implications this probe will have on the midterm election or on the 2024 presidential election.

I want the probe to conclude, and I am waiting to see who pays for the damage done to our democratic process.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Get rid of Ag commissioner, too

Sid Miller has more or less escaped much scrutiny on this blog, but I have decided the Texas agriculture commissioner deserves a brickbat or three as he seeks re-election to a third term as the state’s top “ag hand.”

The guy’s a doofus, pure and simple.

Not only that, he seems to have an ethical blind spot. Foes on the left and the right are questioning whether Miller has the moral chops to maintain his statewide office. As if that matters, you know? I mean, consider that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been under felony indictment since his first year in office and he, too, is running for a third term in office.

Miller, of course, is a Republican. He is known for having a big mouth that gets him in trouble. I recall the time he went to Amarillo and had a steak dinner at a trendy downtown restaurant. He left the eatery after writing a nasty note to the business owner complaining about the quality of the food he ordered. I mean … c’mon, dude. That’s small potatoes, though.

He also went to Oklahoma City on the public’s dime to receive what’s been called a “Jesus shot,” which supposedly delivers a lifetime cure for every ailment known to humanity. As the Texas Tribune reported:

Since his election as commissioner, Miller has made headlines for routinely making offensive statements about people of color and women. He compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes, he suggested in a Facebook post that the U.S. should bomb “the Muslim world” and he used an obscenity directed at women to refer to Hillary Clinton.

Sid Miller’s challengers take aim at his ethics, relationship to indicted aide | The Texas Tribune

Dude’s a bozo.

A longtime Miller aide, Todd Smith, got indicted for taking money in exchange for hemp licenses administered by the agriculture commissioner’s office. Bad call, fella. Miller reportedly cut ties with Smith, but the damage was done.

Miller thought about running for governor against Greg Abbott because of Abbott’s pitiful response to the COVID pandemic. He dropped that idea, apparently realizing he couldn’t win a GOP primary fight against the governor.

Sid Miller is one of several GOP officeholders who need to be shown the door at election time. Will it happen? I hope so.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Is war coming … really?

You might think I am nuttier than a Payday bar for what I am about to say, but I don’t care. I’m just thinking out loud about what might be occurring behind closed doors in the White House and the Kremlin.

My thought is this: Is it possible that President Biden is overstating the threat of war between Russia and Ukraine to purchase some more negotiating time with Vladimir Putin? Furthermore, would an agreement that Putin’s armed forces are “standing down” give the president a serious public-relations bump at a time when he needs it?

We all know that politicians try to play every angle at their disposal. I don’t doubt for a second that Joe Biden is capable of playing such an angle for his benefit.

I also believe the president when his White House flack machine tells us the crux of what he told Putin in that hour-long phone call on Saturday, that the United States is prepared to inflict immediate and lasting economic harm to Russia if Putin sends in the troops to invade Ukraine. I also have difficulty accepting that Vladimir Putin is willing to accept that damage as the price of a battlefield conquest.

OK, call me nuts. I’m a big boy and I can take it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, Donald Trump, national news

‘Worse than Watergate’

Carl Bernstein knows an existential threat to American democracy when he sees it, given that he had a front-row seat at one of the worst threats ever imagined, the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.

However, he said that the Donald Trump unraveling is worse than Watergate because this crisis lacks something that Watergate contained: heroes among Republicans who told the president, Richard Nixon, that he couldn’t survive an impeachment and a Senate trial. Thus, Nixon quit the office and headed off into the sunset of oblivion.

Donald Trump isn’t facing that kind of threat from within his party, the same party of Richard Nixon.

Carl Bernstein Says Trump Investigation is “Far Worse Than Watergate” | The View – YouTube

Bernstein and his Washington Post colleague Robert Woodward covered the Watergate scandal as it unfolded in late 1972, into 1973 and ended with President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Bernstein and Woodward became journalism legends and their work stands forever as the definition of investigative reporting.

I have to agree with Bernstein, that Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law, on our democratic process, on the nation’s cherished electoral system presents a greater threat to the nation than a “third-rate burglary” that devolved into a coverup and an abuse of presidential power that drove a president from the pinnacle of power.

We need answers to the 1/6 insurrection and we need to take measures to prevent a tragic recurrence.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, Donald Trump, national news

What is Trump’s legacy?

2 Comments

REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger

Donald J. Trump’s presidential legacy is being written at this moment and from my standpoint — as if it’s a big surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly — it will contain many more negatives than positive achievements.

It will start with two impeachments and two Senate trials. He skated clear of conviction both times, although for reasons that had more to do with the cult following he built in Congress than the merits of the articles of impeachment brought against him.

It will wind its way through the alleged corruption that congressional investigators are uncovering as they pore through evidence related to the 1/6 insurrection.

It will contain plenty of mention of the myriad lies that poured forth from Trump, including the lie about the pandemic’s initial seriousness and how Trump withheld that knowledge from a public that needed to know what it faced.

The legacy will include the insurrection, the riot on Capitol Hill by the mob of traitors who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost. Accordingly, it also will include Trump being the only president in history to refuse to concede an election that he lost fairly and legally.

I have said more times than I can remember that Trump never should have been elected president in the first place. He won the 2016 election in the most astounding political fluke in American history.

The end of the 1/6 probe by the House select committee is getting closer to its conclusion. The panel does not have a lot of time left to finish its work. It is working with breathtaking speed in its search for the why, the how and the consequence of that hideous assault on our democracy. It will offer solutions to preventing it from recurring.

It’s going to have Donald Trump’s grimy fingerprints all over it … and that, I dare say, is going to be where the ex-president’s legacy will be engraved forever.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news

Trump flushes records? Hah!

I cannot stop shaking my head over reports that Donald J. Trump, in an effort to keep the public’s prying eyes off his presidential records, flushed many of the documents down a White House toilet.

Of all the baloney associated with the former Dips**t in Chief, this one kinda/sorta takes the proverbial cake.

It’s not only illegal for him to have (allegedly) flushed these papers down the crapper, it speaks to a sort of ignorance that the rest of us have known since we were old enough to know damn near anything. It is that you don’t flush anything other than toilet tissue down a toilet … for criminy sakes!

The Presidential Records Act requires those who serve as president to keep all official records for storage in the National Archives. It’s part of our national history that these individuals must preserve for historians to pore through. Donald Trump broke the law! He should be punished not only for breaking it, but also for being a total dumbass.

Do you think The Donald was trying to hide something?

Huh … do ya?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, medical news

No return to ‘normal’ … yet

Have we arrived at that place I will refer to as Post-Pandemic Nirvana? I am not yet willing to kick up my heels, break out into a song and shout from the roof of my North Texas home that we’re there … at least not yet.

Several states have declared their intention to lift mandates on masks in indoor places. One of them — my home state of Oregon — has caused a lifted eyebrow or two, given that state’s political climate and the aggressive nature of Gov. Kate Brown’s desire to impose mandates.

Texas isn’t one of the states to lift any mandates. Why is that? Because we haven’t had any mandates. I am sure Gov. Greg Abbott is going to take credit for the declining infection and hospitalization rate from the COVID-19 virus. Save it, governor. I am going to credit the vaccines and Texans’ willingness to adhere to mask “requests” along with social distancing recommendations.

I am going to continue to mask up for the foreseeable future. I don’t trust total strangers’ vaccine status. Nor do I trust their hygiene habits or their willingness to stay the hell away from me in closed locations.

I will join the rest of the country in cheering the decline in infection rates from the Omicron variant and the various sub-variants that haven’t yet been branded with a name. However, we shouldn’t yet return to what we used to define as “normal” behavior.

I am keeping my masks handy.

And you?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, International news, Joe Biden, medical news

Mr. POTUS, tell Putin …

Joe Biden doesn’t need little ol’ me to give him advice as he talks to Vlad Putin, but I will offer it anyway and will make sure I send it to the appropriate place where someone on his staff might see it.

Mr. President, you need to remind Putin — as if he needs reminding — that he presides over a country with a third-rate economy. It is not a First World economic system. It is Third World at best, relying on oil and natural gas to keep it fueled.

Tell your colleague, Mr. President, that economic sanctions of the type we are able to level on Russia will bring great pain to himself and to the people he governs. We can cut off the oil and natural gas shipments to western Europe, which you have threatened to do if he invades Ukraine. We can freeze Russian monetary assets in banks in this country and we can persuade our NATO allies to do the same.

Also, the president ought to remind Putin of the terrible military cost his armed forces will suffer if they take on Ukrainian forces. Ukraine is not defenseless against the Russians. The Russians can win a ground war if they launch a full-scale invasion, but it will come at considerable cost.

And if Putin is interested in gathering up what’s left of Ukraine and annexing it into the Russian federation, he will do inherit a population that hates his ever-lovin’ guts.

The cost of an invasion — no matter its scale — is too great for the Russians to bear. Putin knows this. He just needs a not-so-gentle reminder from the leader of the world’s remaining military superpower.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, military news

Biden needs an RFK

Who functions in the Joe Biden administration as the tough guy in international negotiations? Who can President Biden rely on to get the message delivered in clear and unambiguous terms that the United States means business when it threatens the other side with severe punishment if talks break down?

I refer to someone such as Robert F. Kennedy, who filled that role for his brother, President John F. Kennedy, during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The situation today isn’t precisely identical, but to my eyes and ears it reminds me a bit of what transpired in 1962. Russian troops are massing on the Russian border with Ukraine. Russian thug Vladimir Putin is threatening to invade Ukraine if certain conditions are not met. President Biden is trying to talk Putin off the proverbial ledge.

In October 1962, the Soviet Union began assembling missile sites in Cuba. JFK got wind of it and set out to talk Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev out of deploying the missiles that could hit U.S. cities. He ordered a blockade of Cuba, using U.S. Navy ships to turn back any vessels heading for Cuban ports. He then dispatched his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to negotiate with the USSR envoys at the United Nations.

RFK laid down the law: either dismantle the missile sites or face the mighty wrath of American military might. The Soviets backed down. We gave them some concessions, to be sure, such as taking down our own missile sites in Turkey. The point is that JFK had RFK to do his dirty work.

Is there someone in the Biden administration to fill that task now? Man, I hope so.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, local news, national news

POTUS is up to the job

I am running out of ways to say what I believe in the deepest regions of my gut, which is that those who suggest that President Biden doesn’t have what it takes to do the job just aren’t paying attention, they aren’t listening to his words or watching how he interacts with other heads of state and political leaders here at home.

And yet …

I keep hearing from some of my own critics that Biden has lost a step. That he needs what Congressman Ronny Jackson of Amarillo keeps insisting is a “cognitive test.” That he lacks the mental acuity to figure out the myriad problems that plague the nation.

Good grief! Give me a fu**ing break!

The president is sharp enough to do the job. He remains engaged in the political process. He continues to remind us that he’s on top of matters. And, yes, the man can string sentences together and can communicate in a way that makes sense … at least he does to me.

Now, to be sure I have been accused myself of being a little slow on the uptake. One critic recently said I am “naive” to think that the inflated cost of goods and services are dragging down the president’s poll numbers; he said many factors have contributed to Biden’s polling decline, that he cannot do the job.

Please. Stop this nonsense.

Is the president a flawless orator? Do the words flow like fast-moving stream from his mouth? No. They don’t. Remember this about Joseph R. Biden Jr.: He grew up fighting a debilitating stutter. He conquered it through tough persistence and patience. Anyone who has suffered through such a challenge can relapse on occasion.

Believe me when I say such a thing, because I know how that happens; it happens to me on occasion. I, too, suffered through some speech issues as a boy. I can get rattled when speaking in public. When that happens, the words at times do not flow freely.

Is the president of the United States immune from the occasional lapse? Of course not!

And if we’re going to compare how this president communicates with, say, his immediate predecessor, I encourage anyone to read the text of Biden’s unrehearsed comments and compare them with what rolls out of Donald Trump’s mouth.

President Joe Biden has all the snap he needs to do the job to which he was elected.

Case closed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com