national news

Pence boxes himself in

It took no time at all for former Vice President Mike Pence to box himself into a corner from which he will find it next to impossible to escape.

He said while announcing his 2024 presidential candidacy that no candidate should put himself above the Constitution and that anyone who does is “unfit” to be president; moreover, he said that anyone who demands others to do the same should “never be president again.”

Hmm. Who is he talking about? Oh, yeah: Donald John Trump!

But when CNN’s Dana Bash asked him if he would support the GOP presidential nominee if it happens to be Trump, Pence said, well, he would support him.

What the hell?

The former VP is going to stumble and fall flat on his face as he continues this bizarre tap dance around political reality.

Either he means what he says about Donald Trump being unfit for public office … or he is lying.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 102: Making room for kitties

Toby the Puppy’s adaptability surely has become a sight to behold.

He now shares his North Texas house with two cats, Marlowe and Macy, who moved in with my son about three weeks ago.

While I am boasting about Toby the Puppy’s adaptability, I need to offer a word about the kitties’ own ability to adapt to a new environment. In a word, they have done just fine.

Indeed, Marlowe and I have become BFFs. If I am lying on the living coach watching TV, Marlowe will jump up, purr loudly in my ear, nuzzle my face and lick my nose. He’s a good boy.

Macy, too, is acclimating herself to her new digs.

As for Toby the Puppy, he stares them down. He rarely these days runs after them. I say “rarely,” but I cannot yet say “never.” He will give chase if the kitties are scampering down the hall and into my son’s bedroom or into our guest bathroom. Truth be told, he rarely even barks at them any longer; any noise he makes is a sort of grumble.

The kitties have made themselves at home, which is what cats do. Toby the Puppy has made it clear to them, though, that they are in his house and that they are — to underscore a point — “unwelcome residents.”

Marlowe even has decided to climb into bed with Toby and me. I have sought to shoo him away at, say, 1 in the morning. No can do. The kitty ain’t about to move. Toby the Puppy, therefore, will stay in bed for a little while, but will relocate to his nearby kennel, where he often likes to sleep anyway.

The mayhem that could have developed when they got here has not occurred. For that I am grateful for the manners that Toby the Puppy has shown.

And … I do enjoy being Marlowe’s newest BFF.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, national news

What is Pence talking about?

Listening to former Vice President Mike Pence announce his presidential candidacy, I was struck by the nation he was describing to a roomful of supporters in Iowa.

The United States of America that the former VP was laying out there for us is a nation in decline, that we are angry and afraid of our future, that we’re heading straight to hell.

I was left to wonder: What in the name of truth-telling is Mike Pence talking about?

President Joe Biden inherited an office at a time the nation was suffering from a pandemic that would kill more than a million Americans. We had lost millions of jobs because employers couldn’t do business while fighting the COVID-19 virus. Our allies had lost confidence in our ability to defend them — and ourselves.

As for the pandemic, it’s now essentially whipped. The jobs are coming back by the hundreds of thousands each month. Unemployment remains at historic lows.

Mike Pence talked about how he would defend Ukraine against a war of aggression from the Russians. Did he offer anything different from what Joe Biden has done already? No. He didn’t!

I am not at all clear as to what the former VP would do to restore the nation. Or what he could do.

From my perch here in Collin County, Texas, the nation is functioning well. This is occurring despite the right wing’s best efforts to demonize the left, to attack that thing called “woke,”

I listened to much of Pence’s announcement today, powered through the platitudes and promises to “make America great again.”

However, I will suggest to the Pencekins out there who have swallowed that MAGA swill that America today is greater than it ever has been and that, yep … the best is yet to come.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Pence: We’re not as divided as our pols?

Mike Pence announced today he is running for president in 2024 and while I don’t embrace his policies or his leanings, he did offer a bit of wisdom in his speech with which I want to agree … in principle.

He said something today about Americans being not as divided as our politicians.

Pence spoke of unseating President Biden, suggesting that the nation is falling apart, that it has lost its way, that we need to “return to traditional values.” Hmm. I don’t know what he sees out there, but the America I see is full of all those values.

The former vice president told the Iowa supporters to whom he spoke about the great divide among American politicians, but said the nation out here in Flyover Country isn’t as divided.

Man … I hope he’s right.

I had dinner Tuesday night with friends who recently traveled back east through the heart of what they described as “Trump country.” They talked about seeing “Fu** Biden” signs in businesses. My friends’ recounting of what they saw doesn’t quite square with the picture that former VP Pence painted about the nation he hopes to lead.

Toby the Puppy and I are about to head east along much the same route my friends took as they meandered their way through the South and along the Atlantic Seaboard. I don’t what I’ll see or who I will meet. As a general rule I don’t sweat the stuff I cannot control. So, I’ll just go with the flow.

I will agree with the former VP that our politics — and our politicians — are deeply divided, suggesting that they aren’t representing their constituents’ desires. Hmm. Is this another sign of a broken system of governance … that needs to be repaired?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Trying to fathom the flood

Some things in our life simply defy our meager attempts to understand them … such as Mother Nature’s occasional lack of mercy.

I refer this time to the incessant rain that has inundated the Texas Panhandle, a place my wife and I called home for than two decades. We thought at the time we relocated there from the Gulf Coast that we were moving to a sort of desert.

In some years it fulfilled that fantasy.

Not this year. Not this month. The Panhandle is under water. Literally!

I have many friends there who I know are suffering from outright terror at what could happen to them or their property. Their fear in this moment is legit. It is real.

Years ago, I chatted with the late Rick Klein, a former Amarillo mayor, who recalled flooding that occurred there in the late 1970s. The city vowed to correct that issue, Klein said. So it built an artificial lake just south of Interstate 40. The basin is intended to catch surplus rainwater and keep it from pouring into people’s homes and businesses.

What’s happened lately? The basin is full. As in to its brim! The rainwater at this moment has nowhere to go but into people’s homes and businesses.

I cannot offer any suggestions to combat this horrible string of events. It’s out of anyone’s control. Mother Nature answers to no one.

You’ve heard it said in recent years after mass shootings that a nation’s “thoughts and prayers” are not enough. I am going to offer thoughts and prayers to my friends in the Texas Panhandle. Why? Because that’s truly all we can do to bring relief from Mother Nature’s cruel wrath.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Rep. Santos: without shame

George Santos is that rare politician who believes he can function as a “normal” elected official despite the enormous baggage he’s lugging around as a result of his lies and deceit.

The first-term Republican congressman from New York is an absolute, hands-down laughingstock. No one can possibly take seriously a single word that flies out of the mouth of this serial liar.

He got elected in 2022 by lying his way into office. Let’s see, he lied about:

His parentage, his professional career, his educational background, his marital status, his family’s connection to the Holocaust and 9/11. Oh, then he is accused of swindling money from someone he knows.

Santos’s constituents elected a mystery man.

Yet he now functions as if he hasn’t a care in the world beyond his duties as a congressman.

Good grief, man!

I don’t even know why I’m getting worked up over this. Dude represents a district far from my home in North Texas. But … he is able to vote on federal laws that affect all of us. I guess that gives me justification to gripe and bitch about this fraud.

Like the man who once sat in the White House, I am left to question every single utterance that flies out of Santos’s mouth.

He is just one of 435 House members. He needs to be shown the door. My hope is that the New York congressional district voters who sent him to D.C. in the first place will wise up when they cast their ballots again next year.

The guy is without shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Charges coming soon?

1 Comment

I no longer rely on my trick knee to give me clues on what might occur, so I am going to lean heavily on the media to project what might be about to happen.

The media are reporting that criminal charges are coming soon — as in perhaps this week — involving the former president of the United States and his squirreling of classified documents away as he left the White House in January 2021.

Oh, how I do hope the media are correct.

Special counsel Jack Smith met today with Donald Trump’s lawyers. The grand jury that has been impaneled to consider whether to indict the ex-POTUS is meeting this week. Trump’s legal team sought to make a last-minute appeal to Smith to not indict Trump. The grand jury is now looking at the mountain of evidence Smith has accumulated.

Is an indictment possible? I do believe that’s the case. It’s more than possible. It appears to be a cinch.

Let the process continue.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

They’re ‘eating their young’

A friend and former colleague recently invoked the memory of the late Teel Bivins, a state senator from Amarillo who was fond of suggesting that Republican politicians occasionally engage in a form of political cannibalism.

“They eat their young,” Bivins once said of his fellow Republican legislators, referring to the every-10-year exercise called “redistricting.”

Bivins isn’t around to see what has become of his once-glorious political party. I imagine he would be, well, aghast at the sight of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton being impeached and now awaiting trial in the Texas Senate.

Bivins was long gone from this good Earth when Paxton was elected AG. I don’t recall Bivins being cut from the same slimy cloth that produced the MAGA cult that is backing Paxton. He was more of a “traditional conservative,” favoring private property ownership, low taxes and fiscal restraint.

But, yes, the GOP is “eating its young” at this moment as the party grapples with the consequences of the stunning and overwhelming vote in the Texas House to impeach Paxton over a series of allegations, involving bribery, abuse of power and something called “official corruption.”

Collin County’s GOP House delegation all voted to impeach Paxton, who also hails from Collin County. How can that possibly bode well for the AG? It can’t … I tell ya!

Thus, the Republican cannibals are picking away at the bones of an AG who’s been in some sort of legal difficulty ever since he took office in 2015.

I just hope they have concluded what many other Texans have done. Which is to say “enough is enough” with this clown.

There is no way to know what Teel Bivins would think, but my fondest hope of the man I knew pretty well would be that he, too, would be repulsed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, local news

Paxton support at home is, um, shaky

What do you know about this? The Texas Tribune reports that all the state legislators who represent portions of Collin County — Attorney General Ken Paxton’s home county — voted to impeach him at the end of the Texas Legislature’s session.

The Tribune reports: But a unanimous vote to impeach Paxton by the five Republican representatives from Collin County — Frederick Frazier of McKinney, Jeff Leach of Plano, Matt Shaheen of Plano, Justin Holland of Rockwall and Candy Noble of Lucas — exposed a statewide rift within the GOP that’s apparently also been playing out in Paxton’s backyard.

Not only that, but Rep. Leach is one of the House impeachment managers who will make the case to the state Senate, which is set to begin trying Paxton for an assortment of allegations no later than Aug. 28.

“It has been true that Paxton had the support of Collin County, but that support has been decreasing over the years, and when the crunch came, it was simply no longer there,” according to Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University and a Collin County resident.

This is fascinating stuff for me, given (a) that I, too, live in Collin County and (b) that I want Paxton to be booted out of office.

We all should have smelled that Paxton was in serious jeopardy when so many GOP House members voted with their Democratic colleague in impeaching Paxton, who becomes the first Texas AG ever impeached.

Ken Paxton’s impeachment hints at shaky support in Collin County, his longtime base of power (msn.com)

There might be a reckoning to be had when the Senate convenes its trial. At least one can hope.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

What if senators …

Let us play a brief game of “what if … ” involving the Texas Senate and the pending trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

I will admit readily that this game is the longest of long shots imaginable, but I cannot get past a historical precedent that could — possibly — portend a similar outcome for the embattled AG.

Let us recall what happened to President Richard Nixon when, in 1974, he was facing impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. The House was set to impeach the president on obstruction of justice over the Watergate scandal.

Then a group of Republican senators went to the White House. They included Sens. Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott, Bob Dole and other heavyweights. They told Nixon that the jig was up. He would be convicted by the Senate once a trial concluded. They urged him to resign.

So … the president quit.

Fast-forward to the here and now and we have a Texas attorney general already impeached by the state House. The vote was overwhelming. He has been accused in a 20-count impeachment document.

Is it possible that word can leak out prior to the start of a Senate trial that Paxton doesn’t have the votes to survive, in the manner that President Nixon faced in the summer of 1974?

What might the AG do? He doesn’t want to be the first attorney general ever tossed out of office. Plus — and this is critical — he would lose his state pension were he to be convicted and booted out of office; if he quits, he can keep his pension.

I am not concerned about the pension and whether he would keep it. My priority is to get this clown removed from office. He has disgraced the attorney general’s office almost since he became AG in 2015.

My hope, too, is 20 senators of both parties — which is what is required to convict him — are fed up enough to boot him out of office.

If the AG quits prior to the start of a trial, then the state will win no matter what were to happen in a trial.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience