Tag Archives: 2020 election

legal news

Judge Jackson must become Justice Jackson

Prediction time, if you’ll indulge me for a moment or two. Ketanji Brown Jackson is going to get a superior rating from the American Bar Association; her record as a lawyer and a jurist will be pored over by the Senate; and some Republican soreheads in the Senate are going to concoct some phony reasons for opposing confirming her for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Biden made history today by nominating Judge Jackson to fill the seat held by Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring at the end of the court’s current term. Biden promised during the 2020 presidential campaign to look for an African American woman to nominate for the high court and today he delivered.

He found a first-rate jurist in Judge Jackson, who currently serves on the D.C. Court of Appeals. She once clerked for Justice Breyer. She had a stellar career in private practice. Moreover, she once served as a public defender, coming to the defense of those who couldn’t afford to pay for legal counsel.

President Biden took specific note of Jackson’s temperament, her outlook on the law and her life experience as the daughter of two educators — one of whom (her father) eventually earning a law degree. Her brothers have served in law enforcement, and she is married to a prominent physician.

She got a law degree from Harvard and possesses a sparkling legal mind.

Look for the pretexts to oppose to come forth. They will come from Senate Republicans who will contend that speciously that they dislike the way Joe Biden narrowed his search to find a competent, front-rank lawyer among the many African American women who fit that bill.

One prominent Senate Republican, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — who lobbied hard for a woman from his home state, Judge Michelle Childs — has stated that the “far left won” with the president’s choice of Judge Jackson. I do hope Sen. Graham will put his hurt feelings aside and look objectively and fairly at Judge Jackson’s background and legal temperament before deciding how he intends to vote.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin promises a swift confirmation process. He wants the committee to make its recommendation no later than Easter. Good!

It is time for the Senate to get busy … and confirm this stellar jurist to the U.S. Supreme Court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news, political news

How did this guy get elected?

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

As I watch the congressional probe into 1/6 trudge along — hopefully to a constructive conclusion — and then listen to the focus of that probe, the 45th POTUS, I have come to an inescapable finding.

It is that I will go to my grave wondering how in the name of political wisdom did Donald J. Trump ever get elected president of the United States in first place. And how in the name of all that is sane and rational did this guy ever avoid getting tossed out of office on his oversized backside after the House of Reps impeached him twice?

He preaches The Big Lie about the 2020 election. His cult followers cheer him on. Trump teases them with hints about possibly running again in 2024 in an astonishing bid to get elected a second time to an office he had no business at all ever occupying even one time.

I read this idiot’s comments, given that I prefer to read them than listen to the sound of his voice. I then wonder: What the hell is this guy saying?

The list of treachery, transgressions and outright treason are too numerous to check off here. You know what they are, what they entail, and you know of the damage they have done individually and collectively to our cherished system of representative democracy.

Trump’s election in 2016 is a case study of a politician benefiting from astonishing luck. The popular phrase du jour of that election cycle was that Trump managed to draw “an inside straight,” while winning the Electoral College and losing the actual vote by 3 million ballots to Hillary Rodham Clinton. I have read many accounts over the years since that fluke victory that Trump never believed he would win. When he did win, he was caught flat-footed, with no clue on how to form a government, let alone actually know how to govern.

Four years later, he got drummed out of office by a seasoned politician. He never accepted Joe Biden’s victory and skulked out of Washington the day before President Biden’s inaugural.

The 1/6 committee continues to gather information and sworn testimony from those who witnessed the disgraced ex-POTUS on the day of the traitorous riot on 1/6. We’re getting bits of info here and there about revelations on fake electors seeking to overturn the legitimate election results; about Trump sitting in the White House residence cheering on the rioting traitors; about the ex-POTUS considering blanket pardons for all the scoundrels who pooped on Capitol floors while shouting out their desire to find and “hang” VP Mike Pence.

There is much more to chronicle. I’ll leave it to you to piece together all that you have seen and heard from this moron.

I always have expected us to elect the best among us to public office. To think that one of the very worst among us managed to blunder and bumble his way into the White House simply defies my ability to explain it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Wanting to put the past … in the past

Almost nothing in this good old world would please me more than to put the past in the past, that we would just stop talking about the 2020 election, the one in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump.

If only we could put the past behind us.

The problem is that Trump keeps repeating The Big Lie. He keeps telling us the election was “stolen” from him. That Biden won only because dead people cast ballots and that elections officials in many key states were so corrupt that they manipulated ballots to create a Biden victory.

None of that happened! Hence, we have The Big Lie!

Why doesn’t Trump let the issue just wither away and die? Because he can’t. He won’t. He refuses to accept that he lost the election.

So, The Big Lies lives on. We keep talking about it. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about the future. I want to look ahead.

I want Donald Trump to disappear. I want him to vanish behind the gilded gates at Mar-a-Lago, never to be heard from or seen again.

Go … away … Donald!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, national news

Subpoena = direct order

What do you do when a governing authority orders you to do something, such as … oh … testify under oath about what you might know about a criminal act?

I know what I would do. I would report to the authority and tell it what I know. Or don’t know.

The 1/6 House select committee is issuing subpoenas to former Donald Trump aides, friends, family members (who also worked for the government) about what they know about the events that led to the insurrection on 1/6. Many of them are refusing to comply with what I would describe as a “direct order” from the committee.

I will add that it is a direct lawful order by a duly constituted congressional committee charged with finding the truth behind the insurrection.

The committee chaired by Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is working with breathtaking speed. It is proceeding at a pace I didn’t think was possible. Congress isn’t known as a breakneck organization. Yet, the chips have been thrown down and this panel is moving with remarkable speed and efficiency toward what I hope is a well-researched conclusion.

As for the subpoenas it is issuing, the subjects of those summonses need to understand the gravity of the orders they have been given. They are issued in the name of an American public — at least most of it — that is horrified at the events of 1/6. We all witnessed what Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has rightly defined as a “violent insurrection” against the U.S. government. Such hideous violence cannot be allowed to stand.

When the powers that be issue an order for those with direct knowledge of the circumstance to report, well, they need to comply or else face the consequence of their refusal.

I believe that is what they call the “rule of law.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

GOP hotshot speaks for other GOPers

Chris Christie said something the other day that other distinguished Republicans reportedly think in private but are too chicken to say it out loud.

Christie, a former New Jersey governor, ex-presidential candidate and former confidant of Donald Trump, said this to radio gabber Hugh Hewitt:

“January 6 was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week: overturn the election. He wanted the election to be overturned.”

There you have it. The truth spills out, again … this time from a Republican of some note.

Chris Christie said what a lot of Republican are thinking about January 6 (msn.com)

Perhaps the ex-governor is trying to restore his reputation as a tough talker who doesn’t give a damn about the consequences. Or perhaps — and this is likely a stretch — Christie is just plain fed up to his eyeballs with the incessance of The Big Lie that Trump keeps repeating, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Good grief! It was the most secure election in history. The guy Trump hired to ensure its security said so — and then got fired for telling us the truth.

I am glad to hear Gov. Christie say out loud what he should have said all along. If only other Republicans — and that includes the voters out here in the cheap seats — would agree with the words of wisdom.

And then act on them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

You go, Marc Short!

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff has found his voice along with his former boss in the wake of Donald Trump’s Big Lie and his insistence that Pence could summarily overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Short told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd that “snake oil salesmen” filled Trump’s vacuous skull with notions that Pence had more authority than the Constitution allowed. That he could have overturned the results of several Joe Biden-won states into votes for Trump.

Uhh, No. He couldn’t do that. To his credit, the former VP didn’t do it. He stood on the rule of law, even though the POTUS pressured him to act way beyond his constitutional authority.

Pence has said that “Trump is wrong” to have made that demand. Now we hear from Pence’s No. 1 guy in the administration, his chief of staff.

What’s more, Short told Todd that President Biden was “duly elected president of the United States” in 2020. Well, it took him a while to come around. He did and for that I am grateful.

Short has now joined a sort of hall of honor in becoming a new target for Donald Trump’s brain-dead epithets.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

Debate is impossible

1 Comment

There can be no doubt at all that one cannot debate intelligently the elements of The Big Lie when one side of this dispute comprises individuals who have sworn an oath of idiocy.

The Big Lie is being supported by the cultists who follow the garbage that flows from Donald Trump’s mouth about the phony theft of the 2020 presidential election.

They continue to say:

  • That Trump won the 2020 election.
  • That legislatures should decertify the Electoral College results showing that Joe Biden actually won that election.
  • That Trump will be returned to the presidency.
  • That the “insurrection” occurred in November 2020 when Americans cast their ballots for president.

These Americans are certifiably insane. You cannot engage in intelligent debate with morons … who are led by the Moron in Chief.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

DOJ files landmark sedition charge … wow!

So, just how serious is the U.S. Department of Justice in its pursuit of who did what and when during the 1/6 insurrection against the federal government?

It has filed sedition charges against the leader and founder of the ultra-right wing group Oath Keepers in an unprecedented allegation that the group sought to topple the government in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The main target is a North Texas resident, Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers who faces a potential 20-year sentence in a federal prison if he is convicted of the charges leveled against him.

This is a big deal, man!

According to CNN.com: Attorney General Merrick Garland had balked at the earlier efforts to bring the seditious conspiracy charge. But in the months since, people briefed on the matter say FBI investigators and DC federal prosecutors have spent much time building the case, at least in part with the help of cooperators and the benefit of internal communications among the Oath Keepers.

Takeaways from the landmark sedition indictment against the Oath Keepers – CNNPolitics

I have heard from critics of this blog who have suggested that there have been no “insurrection” charges filed against any of the defendants accused of participating in the riot on Capitol Hill. Attorney General Merrick Garland has rendered that point moot with the charge against Rhodes and others.

The DOJ probe took a year to complete, which suggests to me that the AG made damn sure to cover every possible detail before announcing the indictments.

The investigation into this hideous event is sure to pick up a head of steam. It certainly should. The House select committee is moving forward with its own probe into what transpired on that terrible day. It is issuing summons to members of Congress and is getting push back from the Trump cult members of Congress who are resisting requests to talk to the panel.

Are the walls closing in on the former president, the guy who incited the riot with his call on the Ellipse on 1/6 to “take back our government”? I certainly hope so.

I applaud AG Merrick Garland for demonstrating an astonishing level of courage in following the law, as he said he would, “wherever it takes us.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Trump got more than he deserves

One aspect of the National Public Radio interview that Donald J. Trump gave deals with the conduct of the interviewer juxtaposed with the treatment he got from the subject of his interview.

I am going to presume Trump agreed to the NPR interview that was broadcast this morning to spread his Big Lie beyond the base of support to which he still clings.

The interviewer, Steve Inskeep, is a professional journalist who enjoys great standing among those of us who love the craft of journalism. Inskeep did a great job maintaining his composure while withstanding Trump’s bellicosity.

He also gave the ex-president far more respect than I believe Donald Trump ever deserved. That’s just me, I suppose, but I believe it to be true.

That’s what journalists do. The speak respectfully to their subjects and give them every opportunity to explain themselves in detail. Trump chose to avoid any detailed explanation of The Big Lie involving allegations of voter fraud, electoral theft and that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” to ensure Joe Biden’s victory.

A lesser man could have exploded at the viciousness of Trump’s lying. Inskeep, though, is a consummate professional. He knows his job is to give the subjects of his interviews the time they seek to explain their positions.

Except that Trump didn’t deliver any sort of detail. He did not attempt to offer any evidence of the specious allegations of vote fraud … because there is no evidence to offer.

Trump hung up the phone on Inskeep after nine minutes of haranguing and hectoring and interrupting him while he sought to ask probing questions.

Through it all, Steve Inskeep kept his composure and acted the part of the consummate professional. He did his job.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Way to go, NPR!

Steve Inskeep, National Public Radio’s main voice on all things political, deserves a high-five, an atta boy and a round of applause for the way he sought to press Donald J. Trump on The Big Lie he keeps alive.

NPR had secured a 15-minute interview with the former POTUS. Inskeep got about nine minutes’ worth of Q&A in before Trump decided he had heard enough questions about The Big Lie. So, he hung up on Inskeep.

The interview is a classic case of Trump continuing to lie, continuing to evade and continuing to produce zero evidence of what he has alleged: that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him through “widespread voter fraud.”

Steve Inskeep sought to get Trump to explain himself, to offer any shred of evidence for the serious allegations he has leveled. Trump, to be candid, was hideous in his assertion of fraud.

My goodness, he couldn’t even stay on topic when responding to specific questions that Inskeep would toss at him.

‘He’s gone. OK’: Trump hangs up on NPR after host presses him on election lies (msn.com)

It was weird that Trump would agree to talk to NPR in the first place. I mean, he has labeled media that aren’t part of the propaganda wing that promotes the lies he puts forth as “the enemy of the people.” NPR is as down-the-middle as any media outlet one can name. I know what you might think, which is that conservatives consider NPR to be a liberal/progressive media organ. Bullsh**! 

Trump demonstrated why he is so insufferable. Inskeep, meanwhile, demonstrated the qualities of solid journalism, which Donald Trump simply cannot tolerate.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com