Monthly Archives: June 2022

economic news

Oh, these costs …

Not long ago I posted a blog item that recalled the good old days when Dad would ask the gas station attendant to pump “a buck’s worth of regular” gasoline into his car.

At 25 cents per gallon, that bought Dad about four gallons of fuel. He could run on that for, say, a weekend.

Well, today I pulled into a Shell station in Farmersville, Texas and pumped 4.546 gallons of diesel fuel into Big Jake the Pickup.

The cost of a little more than four gallons of fuel today … roughly the same amount of fuel for which Dad paid a buck?

Twenty-five dollars!

This makes me so mad … I could just spit!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Indict him, Mr. AG!

The more I consider the ramifications of what is transpiring in Washington, DC, the more convinced I become that Attorney General Merrick Garland must hold Donald Trump accountable for his actions as president of the United States.

Reporters asked Garland if he is watching the televised hearings of the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection. He said he cannot watch all of it live, but will catch up with all of it later; then he said we can “rest assured” that his prosecutors are watching it intently.

The evidence, to my eyes, appears to be mounting that implicates Trump in conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. He knew The Big Lie was wrong, but kept telling it. He knew that Vice President Pence had no authority to overturn the electoral result, but kept hectoring the VP to do it. The mob of traitors threatened Pence’s life, and Trump knew that, too, but he did nothing to stop the violence.

Merrick Garland said no one is above the law. Where I come from, when someone says “no one,” he means every human being on Earth … and that includes the president of the U.S.A.

So, if the evidence leads the attorney general to the former POTUS’s mansion in south Florida, that compels him to ask a grand jury to indict the crooked man.

House committee members keep talking publicly about having “enough evidence” to recommend a criminal prosecution. My one wish is that they would stop saying such things so loudly; it tends to make my heart flutter in nervous anticipation.

Still, I have listened to the evidence presented during the three days of televised hearings and have concluded that AG Garland has enough to proceed.

Donald J. Trump needs to be held accountable for the hideous crisis he has launched. He has broken the law by pressuring state election officials to “find” votes that would reverse an electoral result. He has threatened the existence of our democratic process by telling The Big Lie.

Now he has possibly engaged in witness tampering by suggesting that he would issue blanket pardons to the 1/6 insurrectionist traitors if he (God forbid!) returns to the White House.

I am waiting anxiously to see if the attorney general agrees.

Please, Mr. AG, make me happy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

military news

Audie Murphy: hero who belongs to us

We toss the word “hero” around too generously at times.

However, I want to take a brief look at the real thing, an actual hero who happens to belong to a community near where my wife and I have lived for the past three years.

Farmersville — in eastern Collin County — claims Audie Leon Murphy as one of its famed sons. Why not? When he enlisted in the Army during the height of World War II, Murphy had the Army inscribe “Farmersville, Texas” as his hometown on his dog tags.

This weekend, Farmersville welcomed back its annual Audie Murphy Day celebration. The city had put the ceremony on the shelf for the past two years as it fought off the coronavirus pandemic.

The ceremony honors a young man who in January 1945, at the age of 21, saved a village in France from a German armored unit. He fought the Nazis virtually single-handedly. He earned the Medal of Honor for his heroism.

Murphy did not become filled with self-aggrandizing glory. Oh, no. He remained a humble man. He said often during his short life on Earth that the “real heroes are the men who didn’t come home.” Murphy died just short of his 46th birthday in a plane crash in western Virginia.

It’s more than just a little cool that one of our communities can claim a national icon as one of its own. Indeed, Murphy became the most decorated fighting man to serve in World War II. He received more than 30 combat medals, most of them for exemplary valor.

He knew what they meant. He wore them to honor the men with whom he served and those he watched die on the field of battle.

Audie Murphy was a hero to the nth degree and this weekend, Farmersville, Texas, was able to salute one its own.

entertainment news

Sir Paul is (gulp!) 80?

As a general rule I don’t use this blog to comment on public figures’ birthdays.

Today, though, I will make an exception and offer a brief salute to a musician who helped raise me, who helped guide my musical taste well into adulthood. I refer to the 80th birthday of Sir James Paul McCartney.

You know who he is. He comprised one-fourth of the world’s greatest band, The Beatles, along with the late John Lennon, the late George Harrison, and Sir Ringo Starr.

I have seen Sir Paul perform three times. First time was in 1965, in Portland, Ore., at the Memorial Coliseum; he played with his aforementioned bandmates. The second time was in 1993 at the Houston Astrodome, where he performed as a “solo” act with his band. The third time was in 2019 at Globe-Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

As I have noted many times over many years, the boy can still play. He can still rock ‘n roll with the best of ’em.

To think he’s 80 years young and still going strong … wow!

They say it’s your birthday, Sir Paul. Thanks for all you did to make me the man I am today.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

This isn’t ‘normal’

Make no mistake that I will go to my grave wondering how in the name of sane thought certain congressional Republicans can compare the 1/6 insurrection to a normal “tour group” walking through the Capitol Building.

Yet … they are. They continue to insist that despite what our “lying eyes” are telling us, the attack on our nation’s Capitol was no big deal. The traitors who smashed through windows, waged hand-to-hand combat with Capitol cops and defecated on the floor bore no resemblance to a “normal” tour group.

The televised congressional hearings continue to engrave in our memories that the frontal assault was organized as such and carried out just as radical groups intended.

What continues to astound me is that the congressmen and women who barf out the nonsense about 1/6 have voters back home who actually endorse the perversion that pours out of their respective pie holes.

This is a great country. Its greatness, though, is being stained — indelibly, I fear — by the nimrods conducted the insurrection against our democratic process.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Fifty years ago … everything changed!

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I cannot believe it’s been 50 years — to the day — that a group of burglars broke into an office building, got caught rifling through files and then in the course of an investigation became part of a history-making constitutional crisis.

The term “Watergate” became part of our vernacular. Who would have thought it in real time?

On June 17, 1972, the dipsh**s hired by the Republican National Committee thought they would steal some files belonging to the Democratic National Committee. It was reported initially as a burglary; the Washington Post put the story deep inside its next-day edition.

Then a couple of reporters — Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — began hearing whispers about who was behind the burglary. They told their editors that the story smelled fishy. They sought to get to the truth.

Oh, brother, did they ever find it!

They trooped down many blind alleys. That’s what happens to the most intrepid reporters. Bernstein and Woodward were two of the best. They persisted and eventually uncovered a coverup that would bring down a president, who resigned because he had abused the power of his office to prevent the truth from getting out.

Watergate has become almost a synonym for political misdeeds. How often do we see the “gate” suffix attached to scandals? To my mind, Watergate stands alone.

Woodward and Bernstein personified the very best of investigative journalism. They sought to hold those in power accountable for the mischief they committed. They succeeded famously.

***

When the break-in occurred, I was a freshly scrubbed college student. I was newly married. I had just returned from a tour of duty in the Army. I wanted to be a journalist.

Woodward and Bernstein taught us in real time the value they bring to their craft. They made a difference. I was among thousands of other journalism students who also wanted to make a difference.

These men personified the best of a noble craft.

Fifty years is a lifetime. My own career surely didn’t produce the notoriety that showered Woodward and Bernstein. They spurred me to stay the course over many years in print journalism.

For that I am eternally grateful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

So many ‘what ifs’

Games of “what if” at times fill my noggin with thoughts that require some analysis. My skull is filling up at this moment with a number of “what if” scenarios relating to the probe of the 1/6 insurrection.

What if Attorney General Merrick Garland decides to indict Donald J. Trump on seditious conspiracy charges? My hunch is that he would need to fast-track a trial in a hurry, to get it done prior to the start of the 2024 Republican Party presidential primary season.

What if the AG indicts Trump but doesn’t have full confidence that he can obtain a conviction? Garland would be tempting fate beyond all reasonable measure if that’s the case.

What if the AG decides, “I cannot bring an indictment forward”? He then becomes, in the words of a dear friend, “The Neville Chamberlain of the insurrection.” Chamberlain was the British prime minister who stood by and allowed Adolf Hitler in 1938 to annex the Sudetenland and then Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II. Garland might be tarred for life if he doesn’t hold Trump accountable for what I believe he did on 1/6.

What if U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney loses her GOP primary election in Wyoming? The courageous congresswoman who voted to impeach Trump becomes a lame duck. Then she dons the brass knuckles as she fires up her rhetoric.

Finally, what if Donald John Trump gets convicted of seditious conspiracy?

He’s done as a political force … which would please me greatly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

It was an ‘insurrection’

I do not intend to pussyfoot around politically correct terminology when I refer to the events of 1/6.

Thus, when I talk about the attack on Capitol Hill that occurred that day, I will use the term I have used regularly since it occurred. It was an insurrection against the United States government.

I have needed little persuasion to come to that conclusion, but the televised hearings we have watched over the course of three days have sealed the deal for me.

Some media outlets are careful to avoid using that term. Some right-wing media organizations have issued bans on the use of the term. The pundits who work for those organizations point out — correctly, I acknowledge — that no formal charges of “insurrection” have been filed against multiple suspects already under indictment.

While that is technically true, I should add that some individuals have been accused of “seditious conspiracy,” which by my reckoning is virtually the same thing as insurrection.

Just as I have declared that the attack on our system of government was not a spontaneous “riot” that erupted because some “protesters” got carried away with their anger, I will insist on calling the assault that day an act of insurrection.

Think briefly for a moment. What kind of spontaneity would result in individuals carrying zip ties, firearms and assorted clubs and other weapons to Capitol Hill that day? They went there to overturn the Electoral College tabulation that resulted in Joe Biden being elected president of the United States.

We now are hearing mounting evidence that Donald Trump conspired with his senior aides to block Biden from becoming POTUS. I want the Justice Department to hold anyone accountable for what they did on that day … and by “anyone,” that includes the man who masqueraded as president for four years before being shown the door.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

1/6 was no ‘riot’

I have just made a command decision on how I intend to use this blog. So … here goes.

From this moment forward, I am not going to refer to the 1/6 assault on Capitol Hill as a “riot.” I am now convinced beyond any sort of reasonable doubt that the events of that terrible day were orchestrated and planned in advance.

Thus, the term “riot,” which suggests a spontaneous eruption of violence, is no longer the term of art I shall use to describe what occurred.

I’ll use other nouns to describe the attack on our democracy. Assault and attack come immediately to mind.

Long ago, I determined the Capitol Hill assault was an insurrection against the democratic process. I made that determination even though no one has been charged formally — not yet anyway — with committing an insurrection. But it was … an insurrection.

To refer to that event as a “riot” demeans it. It reduces its significance to something less than what the assailants wanted to accomplish. They threatened to kill Vice President Pence and House Speaker Pelosi. Donald Trump said a day or two before the event that it will be “wild.” He knew what was coming!

It was a planned event! Therefore, I am going to forgo terminology that — to my mind — lessens the importance of what happened that day on Capitol Hill.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Let’s hear from Pence!

After the testimony concluded today in the House select committee’s televised hearing, some of the after-action commentary posed a fascinating question.

Why haven’t we heard a word from former Vice President Mike Pence about what went down on 1/6? 

So, here’s a corollary question: Can the committee ask for the VP to testify to set the record straight on what he heard, what was said, what he did and what Donald Trump pressured him to do on that day?

Today’s testimony focused on the VP’s role on the day of the insurrection. It was to perform a ceremonial duty in counting the Electoral College ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election. The traitorous mob sought to end that process by storming Capitol Hill on 1/6.

Donald Trump pressured Pence to “show courage” by throwing out the votes cast for Joe Biden and insert phony votes cast for Trump. The vice president resisted. He told Trump that was a non-starter.

So … why not hear from the vice president directly? Why not summon the VP to Capitol Hill to tell the committee what it needs to hear about the measures Trump took to pressure Pence to break the law and violate the U.S. Constitution?

Pence already has said out loud that “no man” can change the votes of the people, that there’s nothing “more un-American” than seeking to override will of the voters.

The former vice president has a political future to consider. Testifying before the committee and condemning the former Imbecile in Chief would rile the GOP base that Pence would need were he to run for president in 2024.

Then again, Pence and Trump have returned to the non-relationship they had prior to Pence running as VP on the ticket led by Trump in 2016.

My wish? Issue a summons to the former vice president, set him down in front of the House select committee and get to testify — under oath — to what went down on 1/6.

A lot of people already have put words in Pence’s mouth already. We need to hear from the man himself.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com