Monthly Archives: June 2022

national news

Pence lies about ‘falsehoods’

Way to go, former Vice President Mike Pence. Just about the time you are beginning to bask in some sort of misplaced glory over what we have learned about your conduct on 1/6, you offer a patently ridiculous piece of sh**.

Pence said the following in an interview with Larry Kudlow, a one-time Trump economic adviser, who asked Pence: “Have you ever seen a president who refuses to accept blame, and I want to add to that, commits so many falsehoods? I’m being very polite here, calling it falsehoods – falsehoods, you know, on any given day. He’s out there saying stuff that just ain’t true. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

Pence responded: “Never in my lifetime. I said today that there has never been a time in my life where a president was more disconnected from the American people than we see today.”

Do you get where the former VP is saying? He is suggesting that President Biden is more of a liar than The Donald.

Well, so much for the kudos over refusing to break the law during the 1/6 insurrection. As of yesterday, Trump is still trying to cover the overfed backside of The Donald, the POTUS who actually said Pence “deserved” to be hanged, per the insurrectionists’ chants at the 1/6 assault on the nation’s Capitol Building.

I am at a total loss as to how this individual, Pence, is able to look himself in the mirror.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Gas tax holiday? Sure, let’s do it!

President Biden is considering a temporary suspension of the federal fuel tax we motorists pay every time we put the go-juice into our motor vehicles.

I have kinda waffled on this one, but I’ve decided that it’s worth doing to give Americans — such as my family and me — some relief from the pain we are enduring at the fuel pump.

The “tax holiday” would save us about 18 cents per gallon of fuel with each visit to the service station. The savings over time isn’t a huge amount, but it’s significant enough to give us a little bit of a break from the gouging (I believe) that is occurring.

Energy companies are raking in huge profits while soaking us at the pump. Joe Biden is trying like the dickens to talk the oil company moguls into drilling for more fossil fuel, which would shore up the supply. He has ordered the release of 1 million barrels of petroleum each day for six months from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Surely, there’s a downside to the tax holiday. The federal fuel tax pays for infrastructure maintenance and improvement. That money will dry up, forcing the government to find other revenue sources to pay for the necessary improvements to our highways and bridges.

For now, though, I will — with reluctance — endorse the idea of a tax holiday … just go get some relief from the pain and sticker shock.

It won’t allow me to continue driving the way I did before this monstrous spike in fuel prices. It just won’t hurt quite as much whenever I park next to the pump.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

1/6 hearing drama builds

Who could have thought that congressional hearings would produce so much drama?

I am one who anticipates it with today’s scheduled hearing on the insurrection that occurred 1/6. The star witness at the televised hearing will be a Georgia state election official whom Donald Trump demanded “find” more than 11,000 votes that would have turned the state’s electoral outcome from favoring Joe Biden to endorsing Trump.

Brad Raffensberger, a Republican Georgia secretary of state and acknowledged Trump supporter, refused to do The Donald’s bidding. What’s more, the world has heard Trump’s voice making the demand. Raffensberger, you see, had the foresight to record the phone conversation.

I am going to wonder how the Trumpkins are going to deny Trump said what we know that he said.

Let the drama continue.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

All together now: No secession for Texas!

Let’s all say this together, shall we? Texas cannot — under the law — secede from the United States of America!

Texas tried that once. It didn’t work out. We joined several other southern states to go to war with the United States because slave owners wanted to maintain the right to own fellow human beings as property. The Civil War came to an end in April 1865 and Congress wrote a law that prohibited secession. Period, man!

That didn’t dissuade the Texas Republican Party, though, from delivering a resolution at the end of its conference in Houston this past weekend that calls for a statewide referendum aimed at “achieving Texas independence.”

I have declared already that the Texas GOP has gone ’round the bend. This resolution only strengthens my argument.

The secession argument keeps rearing its disgusting head whenever right-wingers get pi**ed off about something, or anything! They want to remove the state from the clutches of federal control, believing foolishly that the state can solve its own problems.

“It is now time that the People of Texas are allowed the right to decide their own future,” state Rep. Kyle Biedermann, R-Fredericksburg, said in a statement announcing the resolution at the GOP conference.

The Texas Tribune reports: “The legality of seceding is problematic,” Eric McDaniel, associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Texas Tribune in 2016. “The Civil War played a very big role in establishing the power of the federal government and cementing that the federal government has the final say in these issues.”

Texas can’t secede from the U.S. Here’s why. | The Texas Tribune

Yeah, a “very big role,” indeed.

The Confederacy committed the ultimate act of treason in declaring war on the U.S. government. The Civil War cost the nation more than 600,000 lives in the bloodiest conflict in its history.

President Lincoln’s second inaugural speech in March 1865 — a month before he would be assassinated — declared his intention to heal the wounds that ripped the nation apart. “With malice toward none and charity for all,” he said, the nation must move forward together.

Now we hear from the lunatics of Abraham Lincoln’s own Republican Party wanting to secede once again. Why? Because they don’t want the feds setting the rules all Americans must follow.

Do you see what I mean, therefore, about how nuts today’s Republican Party has become?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Strange world, indeed

We have entered a strange time in our nation’s history when two sides of a great — and widening — divide cannot seem to make themselves heard by the other side.

I am going to refrain from the “both sides do it” argument; I will aim my fire at those on the far right of that divide, the Donald Trump cultists who — despite mountains of evidence to the contrary — continue to live in the fantasy created by The Big Lie.

That the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from their guy and that the theft lies at the heart of all that is wrong with the government. They refuse to cede an inch of that turf to reality, to the truth, to the facts that are spread before them.

Donald Trump brought in a fellow named Christopher Krebs to tighten the integrity of the 2020 election. Krebs did his job. He did it so well that when he declared that the most recent presidential election was the “most secure in the history of the nation,” Trump fired him. He didn’t want to hear the truth from his own guy!

And so … a needless, pointless and feckless battle rages on. There is no way in the world, or so it seems, to persuade the Trump Cultist Corps that their guy lost a free, fair and legal election to Joseph Biden Jr. They hang their message on The Big Lie that Trump keeps telling. Indeed, the Texas Republican Party just concluded its weekend meeting in Houston with a resolution that declares President Biden to be “illegitimately elected.”

Where in the world do we go from here?

I hate to think there is no way out of this blind alley. So, I won’t think it. I will retain my eternal optimism that eventually self-restorative sanity will take its resume in our national discussion. The alternative, as we have seen, is unacceptable.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Don’t swing and miss, Mr. AG!

Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and ex-federal prosecutor, has issued a stern warning to the 1/6 House select committee.

It is that if it recommends criminal charges should be filed against Donald J. Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection on 1/6, it had better have it buttoned up and secure for a conviction.

The committee — or Attorney General Merrick Garland — cannot afford to “swing and miss” on this matter if an indictment is to be issued.

Christie, a one-time Donald Trump GOP presidential primary opponent who then became an ally of the POTUS, possesses strong opinions and is able to articulate them sharply and cogently.

He does not believe that Merrick Garland ultimately is going to seek a criminal indictment against Trump. Why? It carries too much risk of a failed prosecution, Christie said this past weekend.

I agree with Chrisie on one point: The House panel and the attorney general cannot afford to get this one wrong. I will disagree, if only nominally, with whether Garland is going to wimp out on seeking an indictment.

Merrick Garland, to my eyes, appears to be a careful lawyer. He is studious and fair, or so his friends have said about him. He also is meticulous and careful to dot every “i” and cross every “t” before proceeding.

That makes me believe an indictment, if it comes, will be ironclad.

That is my hope … and I’m sticking with it to the finish line.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Boebert: ‘no’ on infrastructure bill, ‘yes on this project

Lauren Boebert is one of the Republican nut jobs who populate Congress. She opposes President Biden’s plan to improve the nation’s infrastructure, calling it “wasteful garbage.”

Oh, but she sure likes a bridge planned for her Colorado congressional district.

Which is it, Congresswoman Boebert? Are you for it or against it?

The bridge project is planned for Glenwood Springs. She sent Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg a letter declaring her support for the project.

I haven’t yet heard her justification for opposing the total bill but wanting the particular item to be completed.

Rep. Lauren Boebert called Biden’s infrastructure bill ‘wasteful’ and ‘garbage.’ Now she wants $33 million in infrastructure funding for a new bridge. (msn.com)

I will admit in all fairness that this sort of duplicity occurs all too frequently in Congress. Many congressional Republicans have opposed Biden’s spending initiatives, then they take credit for it when the money comes to their district.

It’s kind of disgusting.

Then again, Rep. Boebert is quite well known — even during her brief time, so far, in Congress — for bizarre behavior and demonstrably stupid rhetoric.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

State news

Texas GOP: gone bonkers

It’s as official as I can determine it: the Texas Republican Party has spun off its axis, it is out of its collective mind, it has been taken over by the Donald J. Trump cultists, the believers in The Big Lie.

The state GOP has concluded its convention in Houston and has declared that President Biden is not “legitimately” elected to the nation’s highest office. The 2020 election, the state GOP said in its resolution, is too “rife” with fraud.

Now comes the question: Does the Republican Party have proof of that preposterous allegation?

The answer: No! It does not!

Hey, the state GOP don’t need no stinkin’ proof! It just swallows the swill served up by the former Snake Oil Salesman in Chief, who has defamed the nation’s electoral system since the moment he lost the 2020 election.

Fed up and fired up: Texas Republicans meet in a climate of mistrust, conspiracy and victimhood | The Texas Tribune

The convention had plenty of lowlights. Such as when conventioneers booed U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, as staunch and devoted a Republican as anyone in the convention hall. His claim to infamy? He sought to work with Democrats in crafting a bill that seeks to curb gun violence. You can’t do that, senator … say the diehard cultists who now dominate the Texas Republican Party.

I’ll be brutally honest. I never thought I would see this day in the evolution of the Texas political system. I moved to Texas when it was still dominated nominally by conservative Democrats. Then the “red tide” began to swell in the mid- to late 1980s. Mainstream Republicans began winning public office.

A Republican governor, George W. Bush, scored a lot of points across the spectrum through his ability to work with Democrats who still controlled the Legislature in the mid-1990s.

Those days are gone. I hope not forever. We have now a state GOP dominated by know-nothings, fruitcakes and nut jobs … which more or less mirrors the Republican National Committee.

The believe in The Big Lie. They purposely spread its falsehoods. Therefore, the Texas Republican Party is populated by liars.

Shame on them, and shame on those who put the liars in charge.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Pelosi is not part of this story

I generally don’t like responding to Internet trolls, but one guy who follows my blog keeps insisting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should’ve done a better job of “securing” the Capitol prior to the 1/6 insurrection.

Here’s what I found out: The Speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. That’s the responsibility of the Capitol Police Board, which oversees the US Capitol Police and approves requests for National Guard assistance. Jane L. Campbell, president and CEO of the US Capitol Historical Society, says that “the Speaker of the House does not oversee security of the US Capitol, nor does this official oversee the Capitol Police Board.”

This comes from a CNN fact-check of a comment that came from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest congressional defenders. To be sure, I am certain my blog follower won’t accept that the answer comes from CNN, which he likely considers to be a tainted news outlet, a purveyor of “fake news.”

My point, thus, is this: Speaker Pelosi is not part of the problem that befell the Capitol Police as its brave officers fought with the traitors who sought to overturn the 2020 election on 1/6.

She might have her share of faults … as a fallible human being. Capitol security isn’t one of them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Accountability is essential

There can be no doubt over what must be the outcome of the 1/6 congressional probe.

It is that people in the highest levels of our government must be held accountable for their action — or inaction — on that terrible event in our nation’s history.

Yep. That’s you, Donald John Trump!

Trump says the televised hearings have drawn “terrible ratings.” You would expect such a shallow analysis from someone who made his living as a “reality TV” celebrity before entering politics in 2015.

But the truth is — as I survey it — that the hearings have delivered a wide range of evidence that suggests that Trump’s insistence on fomenting The Big Lie about the 2020 election produced the assault on the Capitol Building that sought to overturn those results.

Trump knew what he did was illegal, that it was unconstitutional and that it was immoral. Yet he persists to this very day to suggest there was widespread vote fraud in 2020 when — in plain fact — there was none.

He must be held to account for what he sought to do.

It will fall on Attorney General Merrick Garland and his legal team to tie all the loose ends together prior to making a decision on whether to seek indictments against Trump.

I hope he sees what many of us have seen.

That the former president of the United States is a criminal who needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com