Tag Archives: 2020 election

DC riot

‘Justice for J6’ rally fizzles

I don’t know what kind of crowd they were expecting today at that “Justice for J6” rally in Washington, D.C.

My good ol’ trick knee tells me they didn’t get nearly the response that the Donald Trump cultists had envisioned.

“Less than a half-hour before the start of this ‘Justice For J6 (Jan. 6)’ rally, there are not a ton of people at the protest site. There are just as many journalists here, and probably more police,” David Jackson, a correspondent with USA Today tweeted.

Justice for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol? Justice for the individuals who sought to “Hang Mike Pence!”? Justice for the terrorists who thought they could — at the urging of the 45th POTUS — overturn the results of a free, fair and legal presidential election?

Far-right rally draws small crowd at Capitol | TheHill

Are you serious? Are any of these clowns serious?

The Hill reported: “Still seems like more press than protesters. Less than one demonstrator per member of Congress as the scheduled event begins,” Jonathan Allen, an NBC News reporter, tweeted.

The criminals who have been charged should spend a long time behind bars if the courts convict them of what I happen to believe was an act of insurrection against the U.S. government.

Right there would be “justice” delivered to the rioters of J6.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, national news

Anger just won’t go away

The anger I feel toward the (thankfully) single-term presidency of the 45th POTUS just won’t dissipate.

Critics of this blog say I harbor “hatred” toward that individual. I don’t think that’s the case. I have worked my entire life — at least for as long as I have been old enough to care about such matters — to avoid hating anyone.

But my goodness. Why do I harbor this notion when I see a “Trump-Pence 2020” sign in front of a business or a flag flying from its roof with a similar message that I do not want to enter that place to do any business with them?

We traveled recently to Washington County, Texas, which I am going to presume is the heart of many of folks’ political universe. We have seen Trump-Pence signs on lawns throughout Brenham, the county seat. Washington County voters cast 74% percent of their ballots for POTUS 45 in the 2020 election. Some Texas counties logged greater percentages for him last time out. Still, three out of four ballots going to this guy? Wow!

I don’t think much about signs in front of people’s homes. They’re entitled to their views, just as I am entitled to mine.

The business owners, though, who boast about supporting an amoral, sociopathic, twice-impeached liar just continues to boggle my noggin.

I don’t get it. I cannot darken their door. I will elsewhere to do business.

All I need is a business owner to refrain from declaring publicly his or her support of an individual who very well could end up being indicted for felony criminal activity.

Meanwhile, I might need therapy to get over this first-time-ever feeling toward a cheap politician.

Pray for me. Please?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

Ex-VP Quayle: new hero

It’s time for me to admit something.

I was willing to give former Vice President Mike Pence the benefit of ample doubt over his role in the 1/6 insurrection launched on Capitol Hill by the riotous mob of domestic terrorists.

They stormed the Capitol Building, some of whom were yelling “Hang Mike Pence!” Why did they want to string him up? Because he was doing his constitutional duty by presiding over the certification of the Electoral College totals from the 2020 presidential election.

He resisted POTUS 45’s demand for him to “overturn” the results. Good for the veep, I thought, and said so out loud.

Now comes this bit of news from a book just released by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, authors of “Peril”: Pence had to be persuaded that there was nothing he could do to overturn the results.

The persuader? His pal and fellow Indiana resident former VP Dan Quayle, the guy who once was a laughingstock because he once misspelled “potato” in front of elementary school students.

Quayle told his VPOTUS successor that there was nothing he could. Pence reportedly asked for guidance, sought a clue as to how he could rig the election result to produce a victory for himself and the guy who was running for re-election as POTUS.

Dan Quayle has emerged as the unsung hero of that hideous insurrection.

Quayle had danced to that tune already, in January 1993, as he presided over an Electoral College certification after he and President George H.W. Bush lost their re-election bid in a fight against Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

That GOP team, though, did it right. President Bush and Vice President Quayle both accepted their defeat. They presided over a seamless transition and then faded away, stepping out of the limelight.

If only POTUS 45 would learn … if only.

As for Mike Pence, Woodward and Costa have revealed him to be what many of us knew all along: He was the No. 1 sycophant to a twice-impeached POTUS.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

No truer words, Gov. Christie

“No man, no woman, no matter what office they’ve held or wealth they’ve acquired, are worthy of blind faith or obedience.”

Do you know who said that? If not, I’ll tell you.

Those words come from former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a one-time foe of the 45th president of the United States, who became an ally of his during  his term in office, and who now seems to be reverting to his former truth-telling self.

Christie spoke Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, site of a symposium on the future of the Republican Party.

Of course he is right about blind fealty to an individual. No political organization can survive if it attaches itself to the whims and wishes of one person, which the GOP has done as it gloms onto the dictates of the twice-impeached former POTUS.

Sadly, given the climate in which we now are living, the Kool-Aid swilling cabal of loyalists are winning the argument within the once-great Republican Party.

Christie also said this at the Reagan Library: “Pretending we won when we lost is a waste of time, and energy and credibility.” Ah, yes. Credibility. That’s the biggest and most important “waste” cited by the former New Jersey governor.

Christie Decries Focus on Lying, Conspiracies in Stinging Rebuke of GOP (msn.com)

Then again, the former Liar in Chief, the chief purveyor of the Big Lie, has zero credibility anyway … at least among us who saw him for what he was when he entered presidential politics in the summer of 2015. We saw him as a phony and a fraud, but someone quite capable of hijacking a political party — which he continues to do.

I fear Gov. Christie is piddling into the wind while trying to persuade the GOP of the dire need to change course. My bigger fear is that the truth he is telling will be translated into another lie that the cultists who adhere to POTUS 45 will use to their perverted advantage.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, national news

Well … how should this end up?

The following comes from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

It states: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may be a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Let’s see now. How is this going to play out?

A House of Representatives select committee is in the process of rounding up phone records of members of Congress or any other communication they might have had with White House officials on Jan. 6. Oh, that was the date of the insurrection that the former POTUS sought to incite, the one that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

A number of those messages apparently involve Republicans who supported POTUS 45’s phony allegation of “widespread voter fraud.” Now, were they culpable in inciting the riot that resulted in the deaths of police officers and others? Or did their acquiescence contribute to the mayhem that occurred on Capitol Hill on 1/6?

You know who some of them are, right? GOP Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Jim Jordan of Ohio … just to name five of ’em!

Most of us know the truth about the election, that President Biden won it fairly, squarely and legally. We also know what we witnessed on 1/6, the cursing, screaming, the battering administered by the terrorists who stormed into the Capitol Building.

The question of the day, in this context, appears to be this: If the select panel determines that members of Congress aided and gave “comfort to the enemies thereof,” will Congress have the courage and commitment to the oath they all took to remove them from the halls of power?

I hope they will. I fear they won’t.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP faces a reckoning

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There can be no denying that the Republican Party is facing a reckoning.

It has to decide if it is going to remain on the track laid out by an individual who has corrupted a once-great party. Or will it return to matters of principle and public policy?

The individual who corrupted the party — the 45th POTUS — lacks any defining principle. Unless you consider revenge, spite and chaos to be principles that define a political party.

POTUS 45 had zero Republican Party policy experience when he entered the 2016 GOP primary campaign. He won the party’s nomination that year by hammering his foes into submission. Then he won the presidency — with a bit of help from the FBI and its infamous e-mail investigation. He also won because of incompetence in the Democratic nominee’s campaign.

The presidency became POTUS’s play thing. Many of his top campaign aides found themselves indicted on criminal charges. The corruption ran throughout the highest rungs of his political ladder.

Oh, and then he got impeached twice. Once for trying to coerce a foreign government into doing his political bidding and once for inciting an insurrection that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Many of the men and women who served with him have stood behind his corruption and his venality. For what? Someone needs to explain to me the strange grip this clown has over a party with which he had no prior knowledge or familiarity.

The 2022 midterm election is coming up. POTUS 45 wants to have a big time say in who gets elected. He wants to elect those who are blindly loyal to him. Oh, boy. If the party follows that course, it will consign itself — as well as the nation — to a future shrouded in darkness and corruption.

I am a good-government progressive who wants the Republican Party to rediscover its basis for existing and to debate the Democratic Party openly and honestly without the hatred that stains the rhetoric that comes from the one-time Liar in Chief.

Is that possible? For the nation’s sake, I hope so.

local news

They still believe The Big Lie

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Today was an eye-opener for little ol’ me.

I went to Rockwall to cover a town hall meeting held by U.S. Rep. Pat Fallon, a Sherman Republican and a man who describes himself as a proud conservative. I won’t discuss the congressman’s politics with this brief post.

However, I do want to take a quick look at some of the comments that came from the crowd that listened to Fallon. The comments suggested that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the guy who lost it. No one said it out loud, but the inference was clear to me: that President Biden isn’t the duly elected winner of what has been called by many the “most secure election in U.S. history.”

He was elected. The election was fair and square and legal. It has been certified by the Electoral College and by election officials in every state of the Union.

The town hall, in a related matter, didn’t mention the 1/6 riot that erupted when the then-POTUS incited the insurrection that sought to stop the Electoral College certification.

What is so very troubling to me was to sit in a room full of individuals who continue to adhere to The Big Lie that the former Insurrectionist in Chief keeps alive. What’s more, I was a bit surprised that no one brought up the 1/6 insurrection, even if they sought justification from Rep. Fallon over what occurred that horrible and horrifying day.

I get that Rockwall County gave the 45th POTUS 68.15 percent of its vote in 2020 and 78.2 percent in 2016. I only can presume that the truth of the electoral integrity of the 2020 balloting just doesn’t sink in with most residents who continue to believe The Big Lie.

It was just staggering to me to sit there among them and listen to them say out loud — and without a hint of shame — that they endorse a notion that has been debunked time and again.

Weird.

national news

Biden is still POTUS! Well …

2 Comments
(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The sun rose in the east this morning. I rolled out of the rack and got my day started per usual.

I glanced at the news and discovered that Joseph R. Biden Jr. is still president of the United States.

Who knew?

Well, it turns out that the My Pillow dude’s prediction that the 45th POTUS would be “reinstated” by day’s end on Friday the 13th didn’t come to pass. Indeed, the Internet has been full of jokes about the “re-inaugural parade” down Pennsylvania Avenue that didn’t take place. Friends and acquaintances have been asking, “Did I miss it?”

I would laugh all this off, blow it off as a sick joke (which it most certainly is) and not give it a second thought, except that too many lunatics among us actually bought into the crap pitched by My Pillow Guy, and the likes of POTUS 45 legal pal Sydney Powell and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — who’s been disallowed from practicing law in the city he once governed.

Of course, we also have the former Seditionist in Chief continuing to pitch The Big Lie about alleged electoral theft in the 2020 presidential election. Rather than accepting the notion that he was just a temporary occupant of the White House before losing the election, we are hearing about how the ex-Liar in Chief chose to employ astonishing methods to get government officials to overturn the results of the election.

But … he ain’t POTUS; he won’t ever hold the office again. Joe Biden remains on the job.

For that I am so very grateful.

national news

Biden faces stubborn foe in stupidity

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has fought innumerable political battles over his lengthy public service career.

I daresay none of them holds a candle to the stupidity he is facing now that he has attained the nation’s highest political office. It is a remarkably stubborn foe that Biden must defeat.

The problem he faces, though, is determining how he can speak past  the terminally stupid among those who continue to insist that he didn’t actually win the 2020 presidential election.

Of course he did. He won it bigly. President Biden garnered 7 million more ballots than the other guy. His Electoral College victory, while not a landslide, mirrored the total that the other guy won when he captured the presidency in 2016.

And yet, the president seeks to persuade all of America that he has a plan to jumpstart the economy, restore our role as the world’s leading nation, that we need to battle the existential threat posed by climate change and, oh yeah, rid us of the pandemic that at the moment is raging anew.

Only a little more than half the country is ready to buy in. The rest of us, that significant minority of Americans? Many of them are wallowing in the stupidity uttered by their hero, the defeated — and twice-impeached — former POTUS.

Actually, the impediment to President Biden’s effort to rebuild trust in our government involves more than just stupidity. It includes a dangerous dose of evil intent among those who keep fomenting The Big Lie about the 2020 election. Stupidity and treasonous tendencies comprise a dangerous combination.

So it is against those headwinds that Joe Biden is struggling to repair the wreckage brought by his immediate predecessor. All those fights during his 36 years in the U.S. Senate and his eight years as vice president during the Barack Obama administration seem today to be almost quaint.

Stupidity is proving to be the most stubborn foe of all.

legal news

AG Garland, you need to look into POTUS 45’s plot

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Merrick Garland has long been considered a fair-minded, reasonable, rational man who isn’t an overly partisan public official.

Thus, the U.S. attorney general can be counted on to do the right thing even in the face of intense political pressure.

I cannot possibly know this to be true, but I am willing to bet that AG Garland is getting a snootful of pressure to investigate the shenanigans orchestrated by the former president of the United States. They deal with POTUS 45’s relentless efforts to overturn what has been called “the most secure election in U.S. history.”

Is there an effort here to undermine the government? To subvert the democratic process? To actually mount what has been called a coup by the former POTUS to snatch the presidency back from the guy who defeated him in the 2020 election?

If there was a coup in the works, my understanding of the word “treason” tells me that POTUS 45 is guilty as the dickens of seeking to plot against the government he took an oath to defend and protect.

I don’t know what Merrick Garland will do. Nor do I know even if he is talking behind closed doors at the Justice Department about whether he should investigate the former POTUS. My hunch is that he has had that conversation with his top deputies.

Presidents are supposed to temporary occupants of the office they take. That is the case with President Biden’s immediate predecessor. His insistence on fomenting the Big Lie about phony vote fraud allegations tells me he does not believe that to be the case.

Merrick Garland has some studying — and perhaps some serious soul-searching — ahead of him.