Tag Archives: Donald Trump

national news

Searching for ‘a more perfect Union’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The men who created the government to which we adhere today were smart enough to avoid committing themselves to creating a perfect nation.

Oh, no. The preamble to our Constitution declares their intent to create a “more perfect Union.” What it suggests, then, is that perfection is likely an unattainable goal.

So with that in mind, we are marching tonight and then in the morning toward an election that many of us hope make this Union a good bit “more perfect.” 

Donald Trump is running for re-election as president. He is facing a former vice president, Joe Biden. I want Biden to win this election. You know that, yes?

The candidates are pulling out all the stops as they storm across the key states that will decide this election. To that end, it is incumbent that enough citizens exercise their right to vote. The early turnout numbers are encouraging in the extreme; 93 million-plus of Americans have voted already. The final number of ballots being cast could top 150 million, which would be an all-time record.

Does that turnout produce a perfect government? Is that enough all by itself to suggest we cannot do better? Of course not. Perfection isn’t possible … remember?

The early-vote turnout was spurred by pleas from politicians — notably Democrats — who implored us to vote as early as we could to ensure our voices are heard. We heard their message in our house and we voted on the first day we could cast our ballots in Texas.

Americans have watched the presidency dragged into the dirt by an  unqualified, unfit individual. Donald Trump boasts about all he’s done for the country. What he’s done to the country is a more appropriate measure. We have moved farther from a “more perfect Union” during Trump’s term in office.

I truly believe that electing someone such as Joe Biden, a man who knows government and public policy, will restore the effort the founders laid out when they built the framework upon which we formed our government.

May the search for a “more perfect Union” commence.

national security

Waiting for the result

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have a friend of many years — more than 50 of them, in fact — who wants Donald Trump to be re-elected president of the United States.

My friend posted this today on Facebook: Trump haters I will be so glad when this madness is over. If Trump wins I will not gloat and if Biden prevails, then so be it.

This fellow, my old pal, is a better man than I am … I reckon.

Why? Because of Joe Biden is elected president I am likely to crow just a bit. I hope it doesn’t devolve into gloating. There just will be so much to say about the potential end of the Donald Trump Era of Presidential Politics.

I will agree with my friend on this point: We have been through a period of “madness.” I suppose the latest manifestation of it occurred on a highway between San Antonio and Austin when a horde of Trump supporters surrounded a Biden-Harris bus en route to Austin, slowing traffic to a crawl, with one of the Trumpkin vehicles colliding with a passerby who was trying to get past the “madness.”

The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of voter intimidation. Indeed, it seems to illustrate graphically the kind of idiocy that surrounds the re-election candidacy of Donald J. Trump.

Hey, didn’t Hillary Clinton refer to these folks as “deplorables”?

So, the end of this hideous campaign is at hand. I wish I could be as magnanimous as my good friend. I just cannot.

If the results break the right way, I pledge to speak with good manners. I hope that’s enough.

national news

Republicans face a reckoning

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Republicans should ask themselves a serious question as they prepare to vote for president of the United States.

Is the guy at the top of our ballot, Donald J. Trump, really one of us?

I submit that Trump isn’t a real Republican. He isn’t a real anything, other than a real a**hole who has co-opted a party he has grabbed by the throat.

A party that once used to vilify Democrats because of budget deficits cannot use that cudgel any longer thanks to Donald Trump. This guy vowed to eliminate the national debt; on his watch, the debt has tripled. The deficit? It’s on track to ratchet up to $3.1 trillion, nearly double the previous annual record.

Fiscal responsibility? The party that once touted itself as the party that would protect our money has spent it recklessly. That ain’t very Republican, if you know what I mean.

The party of Lincoln once sought to embrace civil rights legislation. It fought hard for African-Americans’ desire for the full rights of citizenship. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson needed help from his GOP friends in the Senate to enact the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s. Can you imagine Donald Trump doing the same thing?

The GOP used to stand toe-to-toe with our international adversaries. Such as, oh, Russia. What in the world has the current GOP president done? He has sided with Russia and chided U.S. intelligence analysts over the issue of Russian interference in our national election. Russia denied doing it; Trump said he believes ’em. Amazing, man.

The GOP used to be a party that insisted that our political leaders have squeaky clean family reputations. Hmm. Does that fit Donald Trump in any fashion?

I don’t expect any Republicans who might happen to read this blog to change their mind just because I am calling Trump a Republican In Name Only. I do hope they ask themselves that critical question about Donald Trump: Is he really one of us?

national news

It’s almost over

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

In the spirit of Donald Trump’s reported plans to declare victory prematurely on Election Night if certain things happen, I want to declare victory of another sort.

We’re just two days out from the presidential election and I am proud to report that we got through it.

Trump has managed to wage the most miserable re-election campaign in anyone’s memory. I don’t believe it will work for him; I am cautiously optimistic — with emphasis on “cautiously” — that Joe Biden will win the election Tuesday and take his place as the 46th president of the United States.

We sought to endure the incumbent’s incessant lying, his innuendo, his invective and insults, his boorishness. I remain baffled that Trump continues to hang onto the supporters he has held for as long as he has been in office.

The COVID crisis is out of control; Trump hasn’t yet spelled out a plan for a second term; he downplays the seriousness of the crisis; Trump criticizes the pre-eminent infectious disease expert on the White House response task force; he has insulted the men and women who serve in the military; he kowtows to dictators; he lied to us about the pandemic when he broke at the start of the year.

In a normal political environment, Biden would be headed to a 40-state landslide. These aren’t normal times. Yet my hope springs eternal that enough Americans have had enough, have had their fill of Trump’s relentless anger that they’ll turn to someone who can feel their hurt, their angst and is unafraid and is willing to express it publicly.

Trump himself has defined and embodied the abnormality of this political climate. He ran for president in 2016 proclaiming to be a self-made business success. We have learned that was a lie. He said “I, alone” can fix the nation’s problems. We learned that to be a form of code that disguised a desire to become an authoritarian leader, rather than part of a political partnership with other branches of government.

Trump has ignored the best advice he could receive. He has relied on his gut. Trump’s gut has resulted in a presidency that has left a trail of wreckage. My hope is that Joe Biden’s team can clean it up.

Here we are, on the verge of the most consequential election perhaps in U.S. history.

I am glad I have maintained some semblance of sanity watching this drama unfold in real time. I am ready for it to end … and I am hoping for the dawn of a new era.

national news

Trump will do what? Declare ‘victory’ early?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I thought I was hearing things this morning. Turns out I heard it right.

Donald Trump reportedly is going to “declare victory” prematurely Tuesday night if the early returns show him leading the contest over Joe Biden. Yep. That’s what might happen, according to Axios.com, which broke the story.

That is weird, man. Totally strange and bizarre. In a way, though, it illustrates a bit of daffy cunning on Trump’s part.

The early voter returns likely won’t have a winner declared in the Electoral College. The winner needs 270 electoral votes to be elected. So if Trump decides to declare “victory” before all the votes are counted, he might be banking on voters deciding against casting their ballots believing that Trump’s actually been re-elected.

Far-fetched? Yeah. It is. There is a strange plausibility to trying such a thing.

In 1980, the TV networks declared Ronald W. Reagan the winner over President Carter early on election night. He had rolled up enough electoral votes to oust Carter after a single term. The polls had not yet closed way out west, where I was living and working at the time.

There was plenty of anecdotal evidence that night of voters walking away from the polling place when they heard that Reagan had won, forgoing their own casting of ballots. The evidence also showed that in at least one key congressional race, the one between U.S. Rep. Al Ullman and Denny Smith in the Second Congressional District of Oregon, that the walkaways cost the Democrat Ullman enough votes to deny his re-election. I watched that one up close as I was working for a newspaper that covered a portion of that congressional district in Clackamas County, Ore.

Donald Trump has a few tricks up his sleeve. I guess this might be one of them he could deploy to deny Joe Biden a victory. For the sake of the Republic, I hope Joe Biden holds a strong lead when the early returns are broadcast around the world.

national news

This is what ‘cult of personality’ produces

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There he was, standing in front of adoring fans, telling yet another egregious lie just the other day about the coronavirus pandemic.

Donald Trump’s fans nodded, applauded and hollered their approval over a blatant falsehood, which is that doctors and nurses are inflating COVID-19 death rates because “they make more money” when patients die.

This, I submit, is the essence of what has been called a “cult of personality.” Trumpkins don’t give a sh** about policy. They adore the liar who stands before them. They buy into the lies. They give him a pass when he defames an entire learned profession — doctors and nurses — with an outright lie.

This is the kind of menace against which Joe Biden is running as he seeks to remove Donald Trump from the presidency he won in 2016 in arguably the greatest political fluke in American political history.

Biden is campaigning against an individual who can lie out loud and in full public view and receive the same level of cheer and applause as he would were he to actually say something true, which of course doesn’t happen with this clown.

Hitler had that cult of personality. So did Stalin and Mussolini. So did Idi Amin and Ho Chi Minh. So does Kim Jong Un. So does Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump is following them all down the road to infamy with his lying, defaming and patently vicious rhetoric.

To think the Trumpkin Corps continues to buy into this trash. Simply astonishing in the extreme.

national news

Enjoying sight and sound of No. 44 on the stump

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I was proud to vote for Barack Hussein Obama when he ran for election and re-election as president of the United States.

And I will be candid: I miss him and wish there was some way he could still sit in the Oval Office. He cannot do that. The U.S. Constitution prohibited him from seeking a third term as president.

Now, though, he has back on the political stage, stumping for his “brother,” Joe Biden, who served as vice president during Obama’s two successful terms as president.

I admit as well to enjoying listening to the former president peel the hide off of his successor, Donald Trump, whose lies and misrepresentations seemingly have been more than President Obama can stomach.

I also wonder if Trump’s incessant attacks on Obama’s record, replete with their litany of lies, has gotten under the former president’s skin. If I had been the subject of those defamatory attacks, I know for damn certain I would be pi**ed off beyond measure.

Obama stood with former VP Biden today in Detroit, telling the horn-honking socially distanced audience what many of us already know: that Donald Trump is an abject failure as president. Obama wondered aloud about why Trump and his GOP cohorts, after 10 years of complaining about the Affordable Care Act, haven’t yet produced anything resembling a replacement. And yet, as President Obama noted, they want to toss aside health care insurance that many millions of Americans depend on during this pandemic crisis.

Amazing, yes? And stupid!

I know I am not the only American who has missed the sound of President Barack Obama’s voice, the tenor of his message or the sight of him laying waste to the unfit individual who succeeded him as president.

Welcome back to the battle, Mr. President.

local news, political news, State news

Texas sets the pace

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s not often I get to brag about the politics of the state of my residence.

I will take that opportunity to boast about a key development that has unfolded in Texas, where I have called home since the spring of 1984, when I moved my family here to take a job with a newspaper on the Gulf Coast.

The Texas Tribune reports that 9.7 million Texans voted early for president, or about 58 percent of all registered voters. Why is that reason to boast? The vote total exceeds the entire number of ballots cast during the 2016 presidential election. The percentage of turnout looks to be on pace to soar significantly past 60 percent of all voters when Election Day comes and goes next Tuesday.

My wife and I were among the 9.7 million fellow Texans who voted early. We cast our ballots on Oct. 13, the first day of early voting in Texas.

That day was a big deal for my wife and me. We usually vote on Election Day. The coronavirus pandemic — coupled with pleas from most Democratic politicians — persuaded us to vote early. We did so in Princeton, near our home. We took all the precautions called for: masks, social distancing, washed hands, sanitizer … you name it, we did it.

We got our votes cast and logged into the Collin County electronic system.

What fills me with pride is that Texas answered the call in a manner that set the pace for other states across the nation. We voted early because we felt concern about whether our ballots would be counted would we have voted by mail.

I long have hoped for the day when Texas could become a competitive two-party state, when it could break the Republican vise grip on the political structure. I don’t know if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will win this state’s 38 electoral votes, but I feel confident in suggesting that they are going to be highly competitive on Election Day. Moreover, so will the myriad congressional and legislative races on the ballot as well.

My center-left political sensibility hopes the Biden-Harris ticket can win the state’s electoral votes and that Democrats can gain control of the Texas House of Representatives. If it happens that Biden-Harris carries the day at the top of the ballot, then it’s “game over” for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

To be sure, that would be enough to make me possibly shout my joy from the front porch of my home.

For now I will settle for the pride I feel that Texans have answered the call to vote early and possibly portending the kind of overall turnout that delivers Texas into a new political era.

national news

Will we know who won on Election Night?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have been rubbing balm on my trick knee to keep it from throbbing during this election season.

Now, though, I think it might be time to let my joints “talk” to me about what might happen when they count the ballots for president of the United States.

Here is what they’re saying:

They are telling me that we are going to have a winner declared sometime during the night. It could be in the wee hours. Or it might come much earlier than any of us expects.

How might we learn early? Joe Biden could pick off a few key swing states early — such as, oh, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and perhaps Georgia. Without Florida in the bank, Donald Trump has virtually no path to re-election.

Then there could be the shocker of all: Biden squeaking out a win in, gulp, Texas. The early vote here has been stupendous, with Democrats in Harris, Dallas and Travis counties rushing to vote early.

I say all this while resisting the urge to predict it will happen. The West Coast states of Oregon, Washington and California are in the bag for Joe. There’s also Nevada, New Mexico and Hawaii. Toss in Arizona and you’re looking at a possible Biden landslide.

Trump is talking up a big Election Day surge among Republicans. They might turn out en masse as well. Will it be enough to overcome the potential early vote surge we’ve seen in Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa where the COVID crisis also is surging? Time will offer an explainer.

My trick knee also could be sending me another sort of message, which is that Trump will enjoy enough of a surge at the end to squeak out an electoral college fluke that mirrors what transpired in 2016. That is the scenario that could keep the result in limbo for several days past Election Night.

OK, one more thought: If we know the evening of Nov. 3 or the early morning of Nov. 4, I believe Donald Trump will concede. He won’t do it in the normal way, offering his congratulations to the winner and promising his full support. He will surrender the White House with gritted teeth.

That’s my call and I’m sticking with it. Such as it is.

medical news, national news

Hey, Don Jr.: Shut … up!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump Jr. said what?

Let me see if I have this straight …

On a day when 1,000 Americans died from the coronavirus pandemic, Don Jr. told Laura Ingraham, a Fox News talking head, that pandemic deaths were “almost nothing.” Don’s dad, The Donald, has said pretty much the same thing, that we are “turning the corner” and that the pandemic “is under control.”

I’ve already implored Donald Sr. to keep his yapper closed, to leave the medical analysis to the scientists and assorted experts with whom he has surrounded himself. Dad ain’t listening to little ol’ me.

I don’t expect Junior to listen, either. However, I must pass along this bit of advice to the elder Know Nothing Son of the Know Nothing President:

Don Jr. … shut the f**k up!