Monthly Archives: April 2022

national news

Trump woulda marched?

So … Donald J. Trump says he would have marched with his fellow insurrectionists on 1/6 but the Secret Service detail told him he couldn’t go, that it posed too great a security risk.

Hmm. Let me think about that. Nah. I don’t believe him.

Trump’s latest proclamation about that horrible day reminds me of the time he said in the wake of a school shooting that he would have stormed the building with guns blazing had he been given the chance to end the massacre.

Armchair heroes, of course, can say all kinds of things. The Donald is known to say, umm, all kinds of things in all kinds of contexts.

Let’s remember that when he had the chance to fight for his country during the Vietnam War, he found a doctor who would diagnose that he had “bone spurs” that, as luck would have it, kept him from serving.

He keeps insisting that he told the so-called “massive” crowd to mark “peacefully” and “patriotically.” Yes, he spoke those words. What is most bizarre, though, is trying to understand why The Donald didn’t call off the rioters when they became violent as they stormed Capitol Hill. He remained stone-cold silent during the riot that sought to subvert Congress’s constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Sigh …

The man cannot tell the truth. Not ever!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

So much for cheering this big moment

Roy Blunt is a chump lame-duck Republican U.S. senator from Missouri who this past weekend declared to the world that Ketanji Brown Jackson’s pending confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court would be a high point in American history, as she would become the first Black woman to take her rightful place on the nation’s highest court.

Blunt then voted “no” on her confirmation.

What, then, did this GOP nimrod do when Vice President Kamala Harris declared that the Senate’s vote had officially confirmed Judge Jackson to the court? Blunt joined the rest of his GOP colleagues in walking out while the Democratic senators stood and applauded the history-making confirmation.

The only Republican to join the Democrats was Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, one of three GOP senators to vote to confirm Jackson; the other two, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, also walked out of the chamber.

I am singling out Blunt, though, because of his idiotic comments praising Judge Jackson’s legal skill, her educational background, her standing as a jurist, her obvious qualifications.

I was left to wonder: If she is all the things that Sen. Blunt said of her — which she is! — why in the name of political reason did he vote against her?

Roy Blunt, who is retiring from the Senate at the end of the year, demonstrated his true self by refusing to cheer for the history that the Senate made in confirming this eminently qualified Supreme Court appointee.

Disgusting!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Longing for old custom

There once was a time in Washington, D.C., when freshmen members of Congress — senators and House members — spent their first terms learning to locate the Capitol Hill restrooms, which they did without hardly ever uttering a word out loud.

Those days are gone. The media these days bestow instant celebrity status to congressional newbies. I wish we could silence some of them.

There were exceptions to the old way of senators and House members having to earn their way under the spotlight. I can think of Robert F. Kennedy, who took office as a senator from New York in 1965. He became an instant star, even though he never really liked serving in the Senate. The rest of ’em largely stayed quiet until they earned their spurs. Hillary Rodham Clinton took her Senate seat in 2001 as her husband was leaving the presidency. Indeed, Sen. Clinton was a household name — as was RFK — before she decided to seek elected public office.

These days? We get the likes of Republicans such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. I’ll lump at least one Democratic lawmaker, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, in that camp of instant celeb. The media seem to enjoy reporting on the things these people say, even when they make little sense.

Lately, too, we have heard from that GOP nut job Madison Cawthorn, who yapped about sex parties, bringing a dose of embarrassment to fellow Republicans in the House.

I fear this all is a consequence of social media. Everyone has a recording device on their “smart phones.” Whatever one can say is recorded instantly and shared with every human on Earth.

I guess I’ll just have to sigh out of frustration, knowing there ain’t a thing I can do to change the world in which we live. Maybe I’ll just have to learn to tune out the blatherings of these newcomers and listen more intently to those with actual governing experience.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Politics turned on its ear

Our crazy, nutty political world has become a topsy-turvy mix that bears little resemblance to the world many of us once knew.

There once was a time when Democrats were seen as being “soft” on Russia, which once was known as the Soviet Union, an empire cobbled together by the communists who took over the Russian government after World War I. Republicans became known as the anti-communist party. The nation was divided along a line that defined the two major political parties over their relative antipathy toward Russia/Soviet Union.

Do you remember when Ronald W. Reagan defined the Soviets as the Evil Empire?

Reagan is gone. So is the Soviet Union. Russia emerged from the rubble of the Cold War. These days Russia is governed by a tyrant — Vladimir Putin — who two months ago decided to invade Ukraine, one of the former Soviet republics that has functioned nicely as a sovereign state since USSR collapsed in 1991.

Who among the American political movement is now lined up (more or less) in Russia’s camp? It’s those Republican descendants of Ronald Reagan, but whose allegiance now rests with the Russian tyrant’s pal who once served as president of the United States.

We hear Democrats, for crying out loud, now speaking of Russia with language that Republicans used to speak when condemning the Russians. We hear occasional rants from right-wingers — the former commie haters — wondering about why Americans are all worked up over what the Russians have done.

We also hear from the occasional Republican politician uttering outrageous statements about who’s to blame for the atrocities we see revealed as Russians retreat from captured territory.

I’m confused beyond my ability to comprehend matters over the flip-flop we are witnessing. Someone will have to explain it to me.

But … wait! I think I know. It’s that former POTUS, Putin’s pal, who continues to call the tune to which Republican pols and their media pals are marching.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Call her ‘justice-designate’

Ketanji Brown Jackson now can be called a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice-designate, given that the Senate has confirmed her nomination to the nation’s highest court in a 53-47 bipartisan vote.

This is a stellar day in the history of this great country, with Justice-designate Jackson becoming the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Her confirmation was a foregone conclusion, with three Republican senators — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine — joining their Democratic colleagues in sending the newest justice to the court, where she will take her seat when its new term begins in October.

President Biden made a double-sided pledge during the 2020 presidential campaign: that he would nominate an African American woman to the court if he got the chance and that the nominee would be a supremely qualified jurist.

The president delivered the goods on both counts.

President Biden has earned applause for delivering on this key campaign promise. And the newest justice — who will succeed Justice Stephen Breyer — has earned the nation’s good wishes as she prepares for the job of a lifetime.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Political stunts don’t solve anything

Political stunts get an occasional laugh or they might allow the individual who pulls it off to crow a little; however, they rarely — if ever — result in actual solutions to pressing problems.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has offered a doozy of a stunt. He intends to round up immigrants who come into Texas, place them on buses and then send them to Capitol Hill to give the federal government a chance to deal more directly with those Abbott said are creating a crisis on our nation’s southern border.

He blasts President Biden’s immigration policy and says if the president won’t protect our border, then states have an obligation to act.

I agree that the president has so far failed to come to terms with the immigration issue in Texas and other southern-border states. His policies aren’t working.

What’s the answer? It is not the trickery, chicanery and political stunt work that Greg Abbott is delivering.

If only the governor and his Republican pals in Texas would find a way to work with the Biden administration instead of trying to show ’em who’s got the bigger cajones.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Tom Cotton: demagogue

Tom Cotton this week did the seemingly impossible. He spoke in terms that would embarrass even the most shameful demagogues.

The Arkansas Republican U.S. senator actually said out loud in a Senate floor speech that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — a former public defender who is about to be confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court — would rise to the defense of Nazi war criminals and would want them released rather than being held accountable for their crimes against humanity.

Wow! I am not sure how to respond to that bit of character assassination other than to say that Tom Cotton has provided a shameful example of the depths to which he and other demagogues will stoop to score cheap political points with the far-right-wing base of a once-great political party.

I thought Cotton’s behavior during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing of Judge Jackson’s nomination was loathsome enough. Silly me. He outdid himself by offering that despicable example of demagoguery.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Abbott plays stupid game

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said what? That he intends to send migrants who venture into this state on charter buses to Washington, D.C., to enable President Biden to “deal” with them?

Hmm. Abbott’s petulance is getting the better of him. He’s also embarrassing many of the Texans he governs. Such as me.

The Texas Tribune reports: “To help local officials whose communities are being overwhelmed by hordes of illegal immigrants who are being dropped off by the Biden administration, Texas is providing charter buses to send these illegal immigrants who have been dropped off by the Biden administration to Washington D.C.,” Abbott said in a press conference in Weslaco. “We are sending them to the United States Capitol where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”

No surprise, to be sure, but Abbott was highly critical of Biden’s decision to roll back a pandemic-era emergency health order known as Title 42 that allowed immigration authorities to turn away migrants at the border, even those seeking asylum. The order was enacted during the Trump administration and it allowed immigration officials to manage the migrants seeking to enter the country.

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/06/greg-abbott-texas-border-title-42/

The asylum-seekers are being caught in this game of political “gotcha” between Gov. Abbott and President Biden.

What puzzles me is this: What in the world is going to happen to these individuals once they are bused from Texas to the nation’s capital? If the feds can’t “deal” properly with them, where do they go?

It’s not enough to just wash a state’s hands of an issue by handing them off to the feds. After all, placing problems in the feds’ hands places those problems in all of our hands.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, legal news

AG faces immense pressure

Merrick Garland has put a brave face on an investigation he is conducting into the activities of the 45th president of the United States. I get that the U.S. attorney general doesn’t want to give away his game plan, but I want to flesh out a couple of issues the AG is facing.

Garland is being pressured by congressional Democrats and some within the White House to hurry up his probe into what Donald Trump did and did not do during the 1/6 insurrection. He says he won’t buckle under the pressure. I hope he holds true to his pledge. However, is he able to withstand it?

Garland would set an astonishing precedent were he to seek to indict a former POTUS. It’s never happened in the history of this republic. Given the precedent-setting nature of such a proceeding, it seems only natural that the AG would want to ensure that he dots every “i” and crosses every “t” properly, that he leaves no doubt of the validity of an indictment, were he to seek it.

To be absolutely certain, indicting a former president would enrage the significant — but reportedly shrinking — base of voters who continue to cling to Donald Trump’s standing as the leading Republican in the nation.

AG Merrick Garland is every bit as human as anyone else. Thus, he feels the heat. Whether it will determine the course he follows remains one of the key questions of the moment. Indeed, Garland has pledged to “follow the law wherever it leads.” OK. I am on board with that.

The stakes of where this probe might take us all, though, requires that the attorney general get it right. Thus, the calls for a hurry-up job appear to be self-defeating … which could inflict possibly mortal wounds on our democratic process and the rule of law.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

What do we call this war?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine devolved immediately into a full-scale war between two sovereign nations, which begs a question that rattles around in my occasionally empty skull: What do we call this conflict?

I am henceforth going to refer to it as the Ukraine War.

I don’t want to give the Russians, led by strongman/tyrant/despot Vladimir Putin any more recognition than they deserve. We know who the “other principal” is in this conflict. It’s the Russians.

The Ukraine War seeks to remind the entire world of the heroes who populate the Ukrainian armed forces and the Ukrainian civilian population, many of whom have volunteered to fight the Russians.

I realize fully that a chump blogger can’t control how history is going to categorize this war. I just intend to satisfy my own interest in this horrifying conflict by attaching a title to it.

Thus, we have the Ukraine War.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com