local news

Retirement ain’t for the queasy

Retirement was sure to introduce me to many shifts, twists and turns and occasional bumps along the way. I knew it when I commenced that journey with my bride nearly a decade ago.

She opted to retire “early” not long after I left my career behind in August 2012. I would follow suit about three years later.

My lesson, though, about retirement is that one must be prepared for any eventuality. By “any eventuality,” I refer — to no one’s suprise, I am sure — to tragedy.

It crashed into me on Feb. 3 when my bride passed away. I am continuing on my journey, but I am now forced to find that “new normal.” I haven’t found it just yet, but it’s coming a little more sharply into focus with each day.

My friends and family have advised me to “take it one day at a time.” I am following that advice to the letter. I am putzing around my house each day, doing this and that chore.

I run errands. I mow the lawn. I have a laugh or two each day with my son, who has moved in with me.

But this new era of retirement has a different feel — quite obviously — than what Kathy Anne and I had expected when we embarked on this journey together.

Intellectually, though, I knew that it was entirely possible all of this could occur. Still, when my world changed forever the evening of Feb. 3, I wasn’t ready for it. I’ll be candid: This is the worst event ever to fall on me. The good news is that I have my family. They, too, are hurting but we give each other comfort when we need it.

I want to share this latest update with you just to let you know that I am pushing forward. Kathy Anne insisted on it if fate were to place me in this spot.

It has done so. The rest of it is up to me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

GOP not more corrupt than Dems, however …

There is not a chance in hell I am going to declare that Republicans as a human subspecies are inherently more corrupt than Democrats.

However … we are seeing a disturbing trend that seems to give substance to that assertion. I refer to the incidents involving GOP-appointed justices who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rather than recuse themselves from cases involving wealthy benefactors, three justices seem to go on as if, well, there’s not a damn thing wrong with accepting lavish gifts from individuals who have business before the court.

This is a matter of perception. If the public believes a justice is influenced by those gifts, there remains little room for the justice to set the record straight.

Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted lavish vacations from Texas billionaire Harland Crow. He hasn’t recused himself from any decisions involving his big-time pal. Thomas was nominated for the court in 1991 by GOP President George HW Bush.

Justice Samuel Alito has been accepting lavish gifts from an uber-rich Republican activist. No recusal from Alito, either. President George W. Bush nominated Alito in 2005 to the highest court in the land.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s wife has been working as a head-hunter for big-time law firms that have cases before the high court. Oh, Roberts is another G.W. Bush appointee.

OK, enough about the high court. I have witnessed judicial misbehavior in Texas at lower courts. For instance, I offered criticism of a Democratic district judge in Jefferson County who used facsimile letterhead stationery to help him acquire a private business license to operate a restaurant in the county courthouse.

These recent examples of lax ethics standards on the Supreme Court, though, does involve Republican-appointed justices. It is troubling in the extreme to see the court’s public opinion standing plummet in real time.

Americans have every right to demand and expect their justices to adhere to high ethical standards. We aren’t getting it at this time from some members of the high court’s conservative super-majority.

I am, therefore, demanding it from the U.S. Supreme Court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Take a seat, Sen. Paxton

It wasn’t the perfect solution, but I’ll accept it as a worthy compromise, given the stakes involved.

Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, will “participate” in the upcoming Senate trial of her husband, Attorney General Ken Paxton. But she won’t be allowed a vote on whether to convict her hubby on several impeachment articles related to the conduct of his office. Nor will she be allowed to attend closed Senate sessions.

The Senate worked out the procedures for the trial that will begin Sept. 5. It will last a couple of weeks, according to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who will preside over the first impeachment trial ever of a state attorney general.

AG Paxton has been an embarrassment since taking office in January 2015. He has been under felony indictment almost since the beginning of his time in office. He has been outed as an alleged crook by whistleblowers who complained about the way he runs his office.

The Texas House voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton. The bar for conviction, though, is high: two-thirds of senators need to vote “yes” on conviction. If any of the charges passes muster, Paxton is out.

That his wife, the senator, won’t be voting lowers the bar just a smidgen. I am troubled that she’ll still be present to influence her colleagues’ votes, although it should be noted that one of the impeachment articles includes an allegation that the AG was having an extramarital affair … go figure, eh?

This case shouldn’t drag on and on.

Let the process run its course.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Just hold hands, that’s all

We would get this question occasionally, particularly after we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in the late summer of 2021.

It went something like this: What is the secret to your marriage success? My bride had a quick answer and it was the correct answer, at least in her astute and intuitive mind. “We just hold hands,” she would say. The question was often posed in the context of our modern society that produces so many failed marriages.

Hmm. Then came the follow up: How does that help?

She would say that it didn’t matter how we were feeling at that moment, whether she was mad at me or we had some disagreement, holding hands kept us close together and enabled us to talk through whatever differences we were experiencing.

To be sure, Kathy Anne and I really liked each other’s company. I can say that without any equivocation. For certain, I enjoyed being in her company. She said she enjoyed being with me … so I would take her at her word.

The hand-holding was something we did naturally. It was never contrived or was something we had to remember to do. We would take walks around our neighborhood with Toby the Puppy and we would reach instinctively for the each other’s hand. Off we would go, traipsing around the ‘hood as the Puppy would seek to mark every weed, hydrant, lamp post he could find.

Friends would comment frequently, telling us that “it is just so cool to see you holding hands” as we walked along heading to nowhere in particular.

We didn’t get into prolonged arguments. But occasionally, as every married couple has experienced, there would be a bump along the way.

Through it all, we kept in touch — quite literally — simply by holding hands.

I offer this as a mini-seminar on maintaining a successful marriage. It helps — at least from my standpoint — that I found the girl of my dreams quite suddenly and unexpectedly one January day in college.

We enjoyed one fabulous journey for 51 glorious years.

We held hands.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

What don’t these justices get?

What part of the term “conflict of interest” don’t members of the U.S. Supreme Court understand?

Now it’s Justice Samuel Alito who’s under the lights over his involvement with a wealthy Republican campaign donor.

Good grief, man.

ProPublica is reporting that Alito took a pricey vacation thanks to the generosity of a man whose company had business before the nation’s highest court.

Politico.com reports: According to ProPublica’s investigation, Alito in 2008 flew on billionaire Paul Singer’s private jet on a trip that included room and board at Alaska’s pricey King Salmon Lodge. That was paid for by then-owner Robin Arkley II, who is a prolific donor to conservative legal causes, like Singer, according to the report. Singer had connections with corporate entities who later made cases in front of the Supreme Court and won with Alito’s support.

Holy conflict of interest, Batman!

Justice Clarence Thomas has been pilloried over his relationship with Harlan Crow, the wealthy Texan who bankrolled glitzy vacations for the justice and his wife. That’s bad enough.

Now we hear about Justice Alito doing essentially the same thing.

You know, when I first started covering the justice system as an opinion writer in Oregon, then in Beaumont and Amarillo in Texas, one of the first commandments of judges was that they must steer far away from anyone who is litigating legal matters before the courts on which the judge sits. Any appearance of conflict of interest taints any decision the judge makes and opens him or her up to questions about their fairness, let alone their legal scholarship.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/21/alito-singer-propublica-oped-00102874

What is it going to take for the U.S. Supreme Court to enact some sort ethical rule that prohibits justices from engaging in this kind of cozy cuddling with big donors and/or with those who are trying cases before the judicial panel?

Chief Justice John Roberts refuses to act. So does Congress. Meanwhile, we keep getting reports from legitimate news sources of these kinds of relationships that — at minimum — cast doubt on the fairness of decisions being handed down by the nation’s top judicial court.

Shameful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

There’s no ‘there’ to Biden probe

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Republicans in Congress have begun their expected yammering over the plea deal struck by Hunter Biden with the Department of Justice.

Biden, the son of the president, pleaded guilty to tax charges and to illegally purchasing a firearm. He won’t go to jail, assuming that a federal judge approves the agreement.

The GOP caucus in Congress is now alleging that Biden got away with something. I am forced to ask: What precisely did he escape?

Republicans vow to continue their witch hunt against Biden until they find something they can hang around his neck.

Let’s understand something about this whole matter. Republicans have been “investigating” Biden for many years, dating back to before his dad became vice president. Have they found anything on which to file charges? Any criminality discovered?

The answer: No! Nothin’, man.

They will come up with actionable accusations the same way they promised to do so with Hillary Clinton and the alleged crimes she committed while serving as secretary of state.

As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, Calif.: There is no “there” there.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden

Biden plea an end? Hardly

Hunter Biden worked out a deal with the federal government to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges. He won’t get jail time.

Is this the end of the Republican Party’s ongoing battle to find something incriminating against the president’s son? Will this spell the end of a search that will have no end?

I think not.

No, it’s likely going to signal at least a temporary surge of interest among the MAGA morons who comprise part of the Republican base. They’ll want more, and more after that … and even more after that. To what end is anyone’s guess.

One of the charges involves some back taxes he owes; the other involves the purchase of a firearm when he was battling drug addiction.

Now, to be sure about this matter, Hunter Biden isn’t entirely clean. He did have an alcohol and drug crisis. He sought help. He got it. He’s now clean and for that he deserves high praise not damnable condemnation.

He also has to explain why he took that job with a Ukrainian energy company that paid him millions of dollars annually. He doesn’t have a thimble full of knowledge about energy exploration. Hunter Biden, though, was the son of the U.S. vice president when the firm hired him.

Now the former VP is the top man. Hunter Biden’s plea deal means he won’t be imprisoned. I am chagrined to report, though, that none of this signals an end to the “witch hunt” that has been ongoing for longer than any of us can remember.

It’s politics, man. It stinks.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

environmental news, local news

What gives with ERCOT?

Here we go one more time and it ain’t likely to be the final time.

The Texas temperatures are rocketing into the triple digits and we’re starting to hear concern expressed on local media over whether the state’s electrical grid will be able to withstand the demand that we are going to place on it.

It’s the Winter Freeze of 2021 in reverse!

Back in February 2021, when Texans were freezing to death in the grip of that killer freeze, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas came under intense criticism for mishandling the power load placed on it. The power shut off, as did the water. We lucked out a bit in Princeton, in that our power was out only for a few hours; the water came back not long after it went down.

The state vowed to fix the power grid. To modernize it. To make it less vulnerable to the elements.

Most of the ERCOT board quit, as did the Public Utility Commission of Texas. New leadership meant changes, right?

Hah! Stop me from laughing out loud.

Summer has arrived! The temps are climbing. We’re getting advisories to conserve energy. Why? Because ERCOT — the seemingly misnamed electricity provider — needs help to keep the AC units running in this heat.

I am baffled as to why Texas — with its enormous supply of energy resources — cannot issue guarantees that its electrical grid will withstand the demands placed on it. It just remains a puzzle to me that a state such as Texas, which boasts constantly of its self-sufficiency, just gnaws on its proverbial fingernails when the temperature rises in the summer.

I mean, it’s not as though it’s a surprise! It gets damn hot around here every year at this time!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

That’s what I call ‘speedy’

You want Donald J. Trump to go through a “speedy trial” in connection with the document pilfering for which he has been indicted?

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said “OK” to one, setting a tentative trial date of Aug. 14 — that’s this coming Aug. 14! — for Trump to seek to fend off allegations that he put our national security at risk by squirreling away classified documents in his mansion as he left the White House.

To be sure, Cannon’s trial date is sure to get pushed back, as both sides likely will want more time to prepare for trial.

But … holy fast-track, Batman! This is what I call speedy in the truest sense of the term.

What makes it so remarkable is that Judge Cannon is seen as a Trump ally, given that the ex-POTUS nominated her to the federal bench. She also had been rebuked sternly by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals over some rulings she handed down in the handling of those documents right after the FBI seized them.

I have to hand it to Cannon, though, for placing this matter on the fastest track … ever!

I just hope the expected delays won’t keep us from reaching a verdict fairly soon in what looks for all the world like a slam-dunk case compiled by the special counsel and his team.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Another ‘first’ sneaks up

When you lose someone with whom you do everything — and I mean that in virtually every sense of the word — then the smallest things one does take on an added emotional significance.

Those who have lost a loved one know about which I am referring.

I took a dip in our community swimming pool this evening; I had to cool off from the 98-degree heat that blanketed Princeton, Texas, today.

This was something I did routinely with Kathy Anne, my bride of 51 years and the girl of my dreams who passed away in February after a brief, but savage, battle with cancer.

I won’t go on and on about it with this blog post. It’s just one of those lessons one learns about mourning that I have just encountered. I’m quite certain the next time I decide to get wet in the pool won’t hit me quite the same way … or any other time after that.

My journey, though, continues. Yes, it’s getting a little better.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience