Monthly Archives: March 2022

medical news

Let’s end the ‘dementia’ crap!

I am going to take dead aim at those who continue to toss a horrible and offensive epithet at President Biden. Itā€™s the word ā€œdementiaā€ or some derivative of that term.

The term sickens me. It should sicken anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one to any sort of neurological disorder that results in the loss of cognition. My family and I have suffered such a loss and when I hear dimwits hurl the ā€œdementiaā€ epithet at the president, my blood comes to a full boil.

I hear it from some of my Facebook acquaintances. Those who read this post, therefore, can consider themselves put on notice. If I hear it from them from this moment forward, then I believe I will sever that ā€œrelationshipā€ effective immediately.

I also hear it from public officials. The most notable of them happens to be a member of Congress who represents a district where I once lived, in the Texas Panhandle. Republican Ronny Jackson, a one-time physician and naval officer, keeps hurling that term at the president. I donā€™t know Jackson, but he makes me sick. He sickens me because as a physician, he should know better than to offer some form of ā€œdiagnosisā€ from afar, without any insider knowledge of someoneā€™s health record.

Yes, the president is the oldest man to hold the office. I have noted before on this blog that the president is on top of his game.

I am just fed up to here with an epithet that is cruel beyond measure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin won’t surrender, however …

Let’s not be swept away by reports of how Russian invaders are being “bogged down” in their advance toward key cities in Ukraine as this hideous ground war slogs on.

The Russian army is not about to raise the white flag of surrender, accept terms dictated by Ukraine and then skulk back across the border to the Motherland. However …

This is not to dismiss the tons of good will and support that is falling on the Ukrainians who are fighting for their lives and for the life of their sovereign country. The love is coming from throughout the world.

President Biden is tightening the economic screws on Russia, its oligarchs and certainly on the dictator, Vladimir Putin, who well might have reached a bit beyond his grasp by invading Ukraine in an effort to reel the nation back into what is left of the Russian empire.

Intelligence reports tell us of morale problems among Russian soldiers who marched into Ukraine believing it would be a cakewalk. We hear about Ukrainian forces shooting down Russian aircraft (fixed-wing and helicopters). The ghastliest reports of all tell us of Russian ordnance falling on hospitals, schools, houses of worship, inflicting grievous casualties on helpless civilians, including children.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t strike me as someone who gives a sh** about worldwide public opinion. He damn sure should care, though, about the opinion of Russians who hear the bad news from the media about what is going on in Ukraine.

Will the Russian populace rise up to protest what the strongman is doing? How inept leadership has relegated Russia to third-rate economic power status?

I don’t expect Putin to end the monstrous invasion in the next day or two. The longer this man’s military cluster-hump goes on, though, the worse he looks. As near as I can tell, Putin’s ego cannot tolerate the battering it is taking as the invasion he launched continues to fall short of the expectation he set for it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, national news

Riot fills me with rage

Without fail, whenever I watch video or hear audio from the 1/6 insurrection, my blood boils, my pulse quickens, my face gets a bit flushed, I get angry as hell at the perpetrators of that event.

Every time.Ā Every ā€¦ single ā€¦ time.

So, when Wylie, Texas, resident Guy Reffitt got convicted this week of five felony charges stemming from his role in the treasonous act against our government, I got angry all over again. The news media showed me what that crowd of terrorists was doing.

My anger only worsens when I hear sh** fly out of the mouth of those who defend nimrods like Reffitt. His wife is one of them. She said the Justice Department is trying merely to make an example of her husband. What utter crap!

Guy Reffitt made an example of himself. The moron didnā€™t need DOJā€™s help in that regard. He recorded his own participation in the riot. We have audio and visual proof of the things he said and did on that horrendous day.

And then for Republican members of Congress to suggest that they were engaged in ā€œlegitimate political discourseā€ offends me beyond any measure. They are causing the founding fathers to spin in their graves. The First Amendment, I hasten to note, mentions ā€œthe right of the people peaceably to assemble ā€¦ ā€

Was there anything ā€œpeaceableā€ about that riot? Nope. It was a violent act of treason.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news

One down, more to go

Guy Reffitt is likely heading to prison, possibly for decades, for his role in the 1/6 insurrection. The native of Texas and resident of Wylie ā€” a town just across Lake Lavon where my wife and I reside ā€” sealed his own fate with his stupidity.

It took a jury three hours to return a five-count guilty verdict against Reffitt, who was ratted out by his 19-year-old son. What was the nimrod doing? He ā€œlit the fireā€ that ignited inside the Capitol Building on 1/6 and then actually recorded his own fiery rhetoric on social media.

The Hill reported:Ā A jury found the Texas native guilty of attemptingĀ to obstruct the certification of the 2020 presidential election, transporting guns from Texas to D.C., bringing a firearm into restricted grounds of the Capitol, interfering with Capitol Police and threatening his son and daughter upon returning from the riot.

It was that compelling evidence that persuaded the jury to ramrod a guilty verdict against the guy who belongs to some nimrod group called the Texas Three Percenters. He went to Washington on 1/6 carrying firearms, such as rifles and handguns. What was he going to do with all that firepower? He was going to storm the Capitol Building and drag politicians out by their hair, or so he said, and do ā€¦ something to them.

Hey, itā€™s all recorded for the entire world to hear.

What a dipsh**.

The federal government has arrested more than 700 people in connection with the insurrection. Reffitt is the first of them to be convicted. He will face sentencing on June 8. He could get 60 years in prison.

Whether itā€™s the max or something less, my strong hope is that he gets put away for a long time.

Then letā€™s get on with prosecuting the rest of the traitors.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Drill, baby, drill

All this chatter about the impact of President Bidenā€™s decision to ban Russian oil imports in the wake of Russiaā€™s invasion of Ukraine misses an important point.

The price of crude has zoomed skyward. It is well north of $100 per barrel. The last time we saw this kind of price hike, the result was that American oil drillers uncapped their wells and got their pumpjacks fired up to start pulling the oil out of the ground.

Do you think it could happen again now that the Russians have launched a ground war in Europe and caused the world to react as it has done by essentially boycotting Russian petroleum products?

I can see it happening.

I spent many years in West Texas, and I can speak from experience about what I have witnessed during previous oil-price spikes. We would drive through the Permian Basin, or the South Plains east of Lubbock and we would witness those pumpjacks working relentlessly to pull oil out of the flat land. We saw much the same thing as we motored through the Oklahoma Panhandle.

Oil producers need little if any government incentive to realize when itā€™s profitable for them to get to work.

At these prices, they are able to make a healthy profit on delivering the goods.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, International news

Get set to pay … a lot!

I am swallowing hard as I ponder what I want to say about this, but ā€¦ here goes. I am ready to pay a lot more for motor fuel if a U.S. ban on Russian oil can bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

President Biden is set to announce a total cutoff of crude oil from Russia. The announcement will come later today, just as the president comes to Fort Worth to talk about veteransā€™ issues.

Gosh, do you think heā€™ll field any questions about the Russian oil ban? More to the point, do you think heā€™ll answer them?

The POTUS has been getting plenty of pressure to ā€œdo moreā€ to make the Russians come to whatā€™s left of their senses. The dictator Vladimir Putin has launched a full-scale, unprovoked, bloody and senseless attack on a sovereign nation at Russiaā€™s doorstep. Oil revenue is funding this invasion. The United States happens to be a prime consumer of Russian oil.

President Biden is about to tell the world that the nation he governs is no longer going to purchase that fossil fuel. The consequence undoubtedly will be a continued spike in the price of petroleum products.

I am prepared to pay it if it helps bring an end to the bloodshed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

End of Russian space flights on tap?

Holy crap! I hadnā€™t thought of this, but one of the casualties of the Russian invasion of Ukraine might be the Russian space program that ferries astronauts from other countries ā€” including the United States ā€” to the International Space Station.

You see, many nations are pulling far away from Russia as it seeks to conquer Ukraine in a senseless and seemingly pointless ā€” but bloody ā€” invasion. That means U.S. astronauts, who have no way to fly into space, given our nationā€™s ending of its manned space program, will have no way to rocket into orbit.

I am an avid follower of the space effort and I want to see Americans orbiting our good Earth. I also want the war in Ukraine to cease, ending the bloodshed and heartache.

Former astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the ISS after being flown there aboard a Russian rocket, predicts the Russian space program could collapse if the Russians have no one else to take into space. Hey, we pay ā€™em good money to fly our people into orbit; so do other nations.

Vladimir Putin has yet another reason to call a halt to this brain-dead invasion.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

War grabs media’s attention

War has this way of grabbing everyoneā€™s attention, even yanking other compelling stories off the front page, pushing them off the air, relegating them to ā€œold news.ā€

So it is these days with a ground war erupting in Ukraine. Russian armed forces have invaded a neighboring, sovereign nation on the orders of dictator Vladimir Putin. Media around the world are reporting on it to us who want to know how this war will play out.

I am unsure how I feel about our limited attention span. I remain deeply interested in the congressional inquiry into the cause of the 1/6 insurrection. Moreover, I want to know how the House committee is progressing in its search for the truth. It will get there in due course and I plan to be waiting with bated breath when the panel reaches its finish line.

President Biden has an aggressive agenda to help boost our already-recovering economy. It is stalled in the Senate. I want to know whether the president can parlay his extensive legislative experience into working out a compromise that can push the Build Better Back bill ā€” or some facsimile of it ā€” to a fruitful conclusion.

There remains a boatload of issues to be resolved, if only congressional Republicans can find a way to work the Democratic president instead of obstructing him at every turn.

OK, so all of that will still be there once our attention looks elsewhere, once we remove our gaze from Ukraine. I want that moment to arrive sooner rather than later. Not because I lust for a chance to see all those matters resolve ā€¦ but because I want an end to the bloodshed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin = sociopath

As the world recoils in horror at the sights and sounds coming from Ukraine for the past few days, I am left only to conclude that we are witnessing the results of a dictatorā€™s sociopathic proclivity.

Vladimir Putin launched a war against Ukraine, running up those proverbial ā€œfalse flagsā€ that suggest ethnic Russians were somehow in danger and that Ukraine was being run by Nazis.

Putin has ignored what has been considered the modern ā€œnormal conductā€ of warfare. Instead of targeting strictly military installations, the Russian goon has ordered the bombing of civilian targets. Office buildings, apartments, residential neighborhoods. They all contain helpless, defenseless civilians ā€¦ including children.

The sociopath is committing crimes against humanity.

For what purpose? To bring Ukraine back into the Russian fold. Putin seems to have decided that Ukraine is his for the taking. So, heā€™s going to take it.

This is a dangerous individual. This is the guy the immediate past president of the United States courted. He told us it would be better if we were ā€œfriendsā€ with Putin than to face him on the other side of a shooting war. Sure thing. However, Putin acted not out of defiance of this country, but out of greed and a lust to return Russia to its recent authoritarian heritage rooted in the Marxist ideology that gave us the Soviet Union.

He seemingly cares nothing about the worldā€™s reaction to his cruelty. My dog-eared dictionary describes a ā€œsociopathā€ as someone who exhibits ā€œaggressive anti-social behavior.ā€

Does that fit Vladimir Putin? Looks that way to me.

Heā€™s a danger to the entire world.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Dare I read Barr’s book?

William Barr is about to have a book published that tells the world what the world already knew: that Donald Trump is a dangerous psychopath who flew ā€œoff the railsā€ after losing the 2020 presidential election.

There. Having established that bit of knowledge, I am likely to pass on purchasing the former U.S. attorney generalā€™s book. Why? Because he isnā€™t likely to tell me anything I donā€™t already know or already strongly believed about The Donald.

When Barr got the call to become AG after The Donald fired Jeff Sessions, I held out hope that Barr would become an enforcer of the law and the Constitution. I never imagined he would become a Trump toadie capable of perverting the law to suit The Donaldā€™s machinations. Barr had served honorably as AG in the final phase of President George H.W. Bushā€™s administration. I was terribly wrong.

Now heā€™s telling the world what we all knew. I am glad he is coming clean. I only wish he had done so earlier, had resigned earlier than he did and revealed to us that the one-time head of state/commander in chief is off his ever-lovinā€™ rocker.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com