Monthly Archives: May 2023

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Newspapers? No interest!

My adaptability chops were on full display as my pooch and I ventured out west for a month, returning home in the middle of April.

How is that? Well, there once was a time — when I was a full-time newspaper journalist — when I would scarf up local newspapers at every stop along the way. My wife and I would travel in our recreational vehicle; we would stop in this or that town and I would look for the newspaper, purchase it and go through it looking for ideas I could appropriate for the paper I was working for at the time.

The changing media climate, sad to say, has relegated newspapers — even the one-time award-winning local papers — to shadows of their former selves. Toby the Puppy and I stopped overnight in towns served by newspapers published in Flagstaff, Ariz., Sacramento, Calif., San Jose, Calif., Eugene, Ore., Portland, Ore., Seattle, Wash.

Did I pick up a single copy of those newspapers? Not a chance. I happen to know what has happened to many of those newspapers, as I have followed the media trends fairly carefully for the past several years. They all have been decimated. They have staffs that are a fraction of the size they used to be.

Many of them no longer publish daily editorial pages, which is where I spent the bulk of my nearly 37-year-long career.

So, with that knowledge, and more, I chose to pass on what had been a tradition in my life for seemingly forever.

The saddest part of all is something I am loath to admit … which is that I did not miss reading them. I have been away from the daily newspaper publishing grind for more than a decade.

Time has marched on. So have I.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

‘Representative democracy,’ yes?

When the founders created this great nation, they established a “representative democracy” in which those we elect to public office are charged with representing the majority view of those who send them to office.

Why, then, does the Texas Legislature — to cite just one example — continue to resist the will of the people who appear to support increasing the minimum age for those wishing to purchase firearms?

That’s what is going on here, according to a new poll published by the University of Texas.

The Texas Tribune reports: Released Wednesday, the survey from the University of Texas at Austin found 76% of voters support “raising the legal age to purchase any firearm from 18 years of age to 21 years of age.” Twenty percent of voters oppose the idea. Republicans back the proposal 64% to 31%.

Poll finds Texans support raising age to buy guns from 18 to 21 | The Texas Tribune

What is just as staggering as the overall support for such a measure is the significant majority of Texans who call themselves Republicans who also support increasing the minimum age.

Indeed, the GOP that controls the Legislature along with every single statewide office in Texas ought to listen to the will of the people for whom they work instead of the gun lobby that keeps funneling money to their campaigns.

I am not suggesting that increasing the age limit is the end-all to the spate of gun violence that plagues our society. It merely adds one more reasonable requirement for those wishing to purchase a firearm. While we’re at it, why not also include universal background checks to ensure that the gun purchaser isn’t a threat to those around him.

I doubt seriously the nation’s founders would approve of the way this political climate has shaken out 200-plus years after they created this representative democracy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Hunt ends … let justice do its work

The great boxing champ Joe Louis once said his foes “can run but they can’t hide.” So it is as well with criminal suspects on the run from the law.

Police yesterday took a man suspected of killing five neighbors because one of them asked him to stop shooting his AR-15 in the front yard because, according to authorities, he was disturbing her sleeping baby.

What did the moron do? He killed those victim, including a nine-year-old boy before fleeing to a nearby town.

The cops found the suspect hiding under a pile of laundry inside a home in Cut ‘N Shoot, Texas, near the city of Cleveland, where the shooting occurred.

I want to offer a word of congratulations to law enforcement for finding the man accused of the hideous crime. It took a lot of coordination among local, state and federal authorities to bring this individual into custody.

A shocking element of this story is that the suspect, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, had been deported four times previously. But he got back into the United States anyway! Good ever-lovin’ grief!

I won’t lay any blame on anyone at this moment; maybe later. I merely want to salute the good guys for tracking down this monster and locking him up. Given Texas’s strict laws governing punishment for capital crimes, I am going to presume that the individual captured — presuming he is convicted of the multiple murders — won’t be breathing the good Earth’s air for very long.

As for the reasons for the crime and the availability of the weaponry used in this latest mass shooting, well … that’s a subject for plenty of future debate.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

She had astonishing intuition

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I have struggled with whether I want to share this blog post with you, but I have concluded that I need to offer a tribute to my late wife’s astonishing intuitive power.

With that, I’ll start at the end and work my way through it. I believe my darling Kathy Anne felt in her gut that she was sick a good bit before we received the cancer diagnosis on Dec. 26, 2022.

Kathy Anne did not reveal what she might have known. She was not wired to do that. It was her stoic nature that compelled her to keep it quiet.

I lost my bride to glioblastoma cancer of the brain on Feb. 3. She fought a brief — but very fierce — battle against the disease before it claimed her.

Now for a brief flashback.

We returned in October 2022 from a lengthy trip in our travel trailer. We hauled our trailer to the West Coast, visited family and friends. Then we returned home. On our way back to North Texas, Kathy Anne broached a subject I wasn’t expecting from her: She wanted to sell the RV. It was time, she said.

Kathy Anne laid out plenty of reasons for selling the vehicle: We had traveled far and wide in our three RVs; we were weary of battling the little problems that kept cropping up with them; we could sell the RV and then decide how we wanted to spend the rest of our life.

I signed on. Sure thing, I told her. I am ready to do something else.

So … we sold it. We pocketed the money and then, barely a month later, she began exhibiting some curious symptoms. She began losing her balance. She was stumbling — a lot.

Kathy Anne also had undergone a significant loss of weight over the course of several months. Our friends would comment on it and she would blow it off, saying she had spent a lot of time power walking through the neighborhood; that’s how the weight came off.

It sounds plausible to me even now. But … then came the decision to go to the hospital in McKinney the day after this past Christmas. The doc told her of the mass they found in her brain. Her reaction? Typical stoicism. “Let’s just get it out of there,” she said.

I look back on all this now and wonder: Did she know something she couldn’t share this past fall? 

I have told members of my family that Kathy Anne was the most intuitive individual I have ever known. As I recall the sequence I have just described, I am convincing myself that her marvelous intuition was at work. Quite obviously, I cannot prove any of this.

Thus, I have just explained why I have struggled to tell this story.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Allred vs. Cruz?

My head is going to do battle with my heart as I watch a possible political donnybrook unfold in Texas during the next year.

In one corner stands Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican who damn near lost his re-election bid in 2018 to Beto O’Rourke. In the other stands Texas U.S. Rep. Colin Allred from nearby Dallas, who has cruised to re-election twice since upsetting GOP Rep. Pete Sessions in 2018.

Cruz and Allred might be running against each other in the fall of 2024.

Cruz will be nominated by Texas Republican voters. Allred’s nomination remains nominally in doubt, as he faces a possible opponent in state Sen. Roland Guiterrez, who is running in response to the GOP’s failure to do anything in reacting the hideous massacre in Uvalde.

Let’s presume — if I dare — that Allred will be nominated in the event he decides to declare for the contest.

That’s when the head vs. heart conflict kicks in.

My head tells me that Cruz will be difficult to beat in this still-heavily Republican state. My heart wants Allred to send Cruz packing.

Ted Cruz has been a ghastly representative for the state. He seems to have zero friends in the Senate, even among his fellow Republicans. He is arguably the most intensely partisan member of the upper legislative chamber. He also — without question — is its most obnoxious.

Many of us Texans never will forget — nor should we — that magical moment when Cruz decided to head for Cancun while Texans were freezing to death in February 2021. He then decided to blame his young daughter for talking him into taking the family for a little surf and sun.

The guy is a disgrace. Someone has to look long and hard to find a single piece of constructive legislation that the Cruz Missile has authored. They won’t find any.

Meanwhile, Rep. Allred has shown some serious bipartisan chops in working with his Republican colleagues in the House.

Colin Allred flipped a House seat from Republican to Democrat in 2018. We might get to see if he can repeat the feat in 2024 by turning a Senate seat into one that puts Texans first.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS: above the law?

The irony is so rich you can slice and dice it, given the U.S. Supreme Court’s insistence that lower courts abide by strict ethics rules … but operates on its own without any such restriction.

We have three justices on the nation’s highest court who now have some serious — and possibly egregious — ethics troubles hanging over them.

They start with the chief justice, John Roberts and include Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. The Senate Judiciary Committee had invited Chief Justice Roberts to visit with the panel about those questions, but Roberts declined, citing judicial independence.

Ridiculous.

Roberts’s wife is a headhunter for law firms, earning millions of dollars annually. The firms for which she works routinely have business before her husband’s court. Conflict of interest? Looks like it to me.

Justice Gorsuch sold some property to a lawyer with another mega firm, which also does business with the court. More conflict? Umm, yep!

Justice Thomas has demonstrated a nearly legendary lapse of judgment. His wife is part of the Big Lie crowd, believing the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump; a Texas gazillionaire has lavished gifts on the Thomases and the justice has failed to report them; the rich Texan also has purchased the justice’s mother’s home and allows her to live there rent free. What do you think about that? Yeah … conflict of interest.

But the court has no rules governing this conduct. There are no restrictions or reporting requirements demanded of the men and women who serve on the court.

These men all have one thing else in common: they are Republican-nominated justices.

Why mention the partisan label? Well, consider something else. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, was a partner in an international law firm. By the time VP Harris was sworn into office, Emhoff quit his job, surrendering millions of dollars in income. Why? Because there might be a hint of conflict. He chose the right path and is now teaching law at Georgetown University, earning a handsome salary, but which is significantly less than he would have earned had he stayed employed by the mega firm.

No one can fire any of the justices, or the vice president. The only way to remove them from office is to impeach them and then convict them in a congressional trial. The three men mentioned here have ignored any pretense of ethical conduct; the vice president and her husband have chosen a more correct option.

There must be an accounting for the individuals who serve on the nation’s highest court. For the chief justice to resist any calls for ethics reform is to betray the high office he occupies.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Just quit, Justice Thomas!

Your humble blogger — that’s me! — has used this forum to call for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign because of what I believe is a conflict of interest involving his wife’s involvement with The Big Lie movement and the 2020 presidential election.

I now want to offer a brief explanation as to why it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference on the high court.

The Supreme Court now comprises a 6 to 3 conservative majority. Thomas is one of the six; the others are Chief Justice John Roberts and associate justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

If Thomas left the court, it would still have a conservative majority, given that President Biden is likely to find a more, um, liberal judge to confirm to the court.

So, what’s the big deal? Justice Thomas no longer is able to serve on the court when his wife is actively involved in a matter involving the 2020 election, which keeps coming before the court on various rulings … which Thomas glaringly deviates from the majority by dissenting in favor of the 45th POTUS.

Then comes the news about Justice Thomas taking those lavish gifts from a billionaire Texan and refusing to report them, as he should have done. Good grief! Oh, and then the billionaire ends up buying a house for Thomas’s mother … and lets her live there rent-free!

Just resign, Justice Thomas.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

National mood: toxic

My eternal optimism is being tested to its limits by the current mood of the nation I love with all my heart.

It troubles me in the extreme to see the major political parties so deeply divided. I hurt at the prospect of congressmen and women expressing fear of working with their colleagues. I long for the day when these officials could differ on policy but remain friends in private.

When in the world did it occur? When did we become so full of hatred for each other? I know the answer to those rhetorical questions.

It occurred when Donald J. Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and declared in 2015 that if he was elected president, he would ban Muslims from entering the country and would curb what he described as the tide of criminals streaming here from Mexico, accusing our hemispheric neighbors of being “rapists, murderers and drug dealers.”

It went downhill from there in a big hurry.

Then he declared that the media are the “enemy of the people.” He chastised gay Americans. He vowed to “make America great again.” He pitted Americans against each other.

He denigrated those who wanted to wear the uniform of the country in a time of war … a jab many of us took personally, if you get my drift.

The list is long. He left a nation damaged from his time in office. I am not going to believe the damage is permanent. That optimism in me wants to believe we can heal ourselves. I won’t let that belief go.

He is gone from public office. My sincerest hope of all is that he doesn’t ever return to public life, that the crimes I believe he committed will bring him down.

Meanwhile, my sincerest hope of all is that we can restore some semblance of collegiality and rid our public discourse of the extreme bitterness that infects it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Not wanting to climb aboard

You may count me as one of the few — apparently, it seems — observers of the 2024 presidential campaign who is unwilling to examine every little thing that flies out of the mouth of the 45th POTUS.

Why? Because I am not yet willing to buy into the harebrained notion that the immediate past POTUS is going to be nominated to run against President Biden next summer.

It’s not because I trust the judgment of Republican primary voters. I already have declared that I mistakenly overestimated the intelligence of the average GOP primary voter. He and she seem all too willing to give the twice-impeached and once (so far) indicted ex-POTUS a pass on his previous disastrous term in office.

They have forgiven him for denigrating a physically challenged New York Times reporter, for bragging about grabbing women by their private area, for applauding the “lock her up” chants at his campaign rallies, for admitting he never has asked for forgiveness, for disparaging the Vietnam War service of a genuine hero, the late John McCain.

Oh, and the insurrection he incited on 1/6? Pffft! Who cares, right?

I am going to place my faith on the indictments that are sure to come from Fulton County, Ga., and from the Justice Department. They are examining some mighty serious criminal behavior that Donald Trump (allegedly) committed. If he’s convicted of any of the crimes, he could spend a lot of years in prison … given the AG’s declaration that “no one is above the law.”

I just do not know how he can run for POTUS and fight to keep the hounds at bay.

Maybe I’m wrong. I hope to have this one right.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

POTUS is as sharp as ever

I am going to offer a very brief warning to those who read this blog and who insist on hurling epithets at President Biden, alleging that he’s too old to run for a second term and that he’s lost his mental acuity.

Your blogger, that’s me, won’t accept that criticism or allow it on this blog. That’s right! I am going to keep my eyes peeled for those who insist that Joe Biden has lost his snap.

He has lost nothing. The president remains sharp and focused on the job of protecting us against enemies foreign and domestic. He is faithful to the oath he took when he became president.

Therefore, I simply am not going to allow that kind of defamatory criticism see light on this platform.

Are we clear? Good!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com