Tag Archives: 2024 election

national news

GOP voters = numbskulls

All right, gang, here’s a confession coming your way: I have been far too willing to overstate the intelligence of the average Republican presidential primary voter.

Therefore, I am going to presume the worst among my GOP friends, that they aren’t as discerning a group of voters as I have presumed for far too long.

Evidence of my misguided attitude? It is that Donald J. Trump stands out among the Republican pretenders for the presidency as the hands-down favorite for the party’s nomination next summer.

So help me, God in heaven. I never thought that Republican voters would be so gullible to believe that a twice-impeached, once (for now) indicted politician could emerge from a field of supposedly competent pols as the frontrunner.

What in the world is happening to our body politic?

A party that once stood for fiscal responsibility, for democratic rule over autocracy, for maintaining our standing as the world’s indispensable nation, for equality for all Americans has become an organization that is steeped in the politics of fear.

They tell us that Democrats intend to “take our guns away,” that they are “socialists” and that they condone pedophilia. They look the other way as Russia attacks a sovereign neighbor and seeks to bring Ukraine under the Russian jackboot.

Republicans are following the lead of the former POTUS, the guy who was impeached for seeking political favor from a foreign head of state and for inciting an assault on the Capitol Building as Congress was seeking to ratify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Here he is again, never once conceding that he lost the 2020 election, seeking yet another turn in the Oval Office. And Republicans are lining up behind his overfed backside to support him.

Who knew — or thought — this could happen?

Well, not me.

I’ve been sitting out here in Flyover Country suggesting that Trump’s candidacy is going to flame out, that Republicans would come to their senses and look for someone else to lead their party. How silly and naive of me to think such a thing.

I’m not going to surrender my thoughts on the future of Trump’s candidacy. I will cling to the belief that the upcoming indictments — which constitute the main event in this titanic brawl — will doom his candidacy ultimately.

The legal system might be the only thing left to rid us of this hideous monster. We certainly cannot rely on Republicans’ (non-existent) good judgment.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden: ‘Watch me’

OK, Mr. President. I’m going to keep an eye on you … in fact, I’ll keep both eyes on you as you navigate your way to what I hope is a second term as president of the United States.

I am glad you announced your intention to seek re-election. I am profoundly disappointed and astonished that I have overstated the intelligence of rank-and-file Republicans, who reportedly still want to nominate a twice-impeached and indicted former POTUS.

Go … figure.

In some perverse way, I would welcome a rematch between you and the moron you defeated in 2020. I am not going to spend much time worrying about him. I am going to spend the bulk of my political attention on you, sir, and hope that you continue to maintain good health as you continue to lead the nation while campaigning for another term in the White House.

And, yes, I am glad as well that your re-election announcement ad featured Vice President Kamala Harris, who I believe has served you — and the country — well in her history-making role as second-in-command of the executive branch of government.

Your age isn’t a plus. That’s a given. What also should be a given is the record of accomplishment you have piled up in your first term as president.

With that, I will wish you Godspeed, Mr. President, as you launch the final political campaign of your career.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden set to go again?

Joe Biden doesn’t need any advice from little ol’ me out here in Flyover Country … but he’s going to get some anyway.

Mr. President, let me be among the millions of Americans who voted for you in 2020 to wish you well as you launch your re-election effort. We hear it’s this week and that you’ll do it via an online platform of some sort.

Go for it!

The president has plenty to sell a public that seems embittered by the politics of the past half-dozen years. It appears that Joe Biden cannot do anything totally right in the eyes of a public that seems unwilling or unable to recognize success when it slaps ’em in the puss.

President Biden has gotten damn little help from his Republican “friends” in Congress. Democrats have held together on Capitol Hill to approve a number of key laws: gun safety rules, the Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure repair and rebuilding.

Biden has spoken glowingly of his history of working well with Republicans. I guess it goes only so far as his record in the Senate and his eight-year stint at vice president. As POTUS? The GOP has dug in, many of ’em still angry that he defeated their hero in the 2020 presidential election.

I don’t want the president to re-litigate the previous election, which is what his defeated foe in 2020 keeps doing. Joe Biden should look to the future and tell us what he intends to do in a second term.

President Biden might need some help in ensuring he carries through on his agenda. Voters appear to be getting lathered up over the GOP’s insistence on banning abortion nationally, its resistance to gun safety measures and its haggling over the debt limit increase … and the failure to pay our debts sending the world’s economy into the crapper.

I said prior to the 2020 primary campaign that Joe Biden wasn’t my first pick. He ended up winning the Democratic nomination and, therefore, became my guy along with 81 million other Americans.

He’s my guy going into the 2024 election.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP pursues backward strategy

It is with decidedly mixed feelings that I offer a commentary on the pursuit of Republican presidential candidates — some of whom are announced, others are presumed to be running — to win back the White House in 2024.

Their strategies are backfiring. Rather than reaching out to the middle class, to independents, to women appalled at the GOP’s assault on their reproductive rights, the party is shoring up its support with his shrinking — but still fanatic — political base.

Why the mixed feeling? Because as a good-government progressive, I want Democratic President Joe Biden to be re-elected next year. GOP candidates are playing right into Democrats’ wheelhouse with their rigid ideology.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of the presumed Republican candidates for POTUS, is going after the Disney Corporation, which makes me go … huh?

DeSantis is faithful to the “don’t say ‘gay'” doctrine that seeks to denigrate gay Americans. He wants to ban books from public schools that teach students about racism. DeSantis and other hard-core Republicans also resist any effort to seek solutions to the gun violence that continues to kill innocent Americans seemingly every day. And, of course, he wants to invoke a nationwide ban on abortion.

DeSantis and the 45th president of the United States are the presumed frontrunners for the GOP presidential nomination. The ex-POTUS still cannot stop harping about The Big Lie and the long-since-debunked notion that the 2020 election was pilfered from him. No! The dude lost the election!

He also has been indicted and faces the probability of more indictments to come.

There likely will be others who will seek the GOP nomination. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson are in. Ex-VP Mike Pence might run, too.

Who among them will break away from the MAGA base’s infatuation with the ex-POTUS? Whoever does will proceed at his or her risk, as the MAGA wing controls the flow of events within the party.

How does that make this voter feel? Let ’em fight among themselves.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump

Mixed feelings about POTUS 45’s campaign

I remain fairly convinced that the 45th president of the U.S. isn’t going to stay in the race for the White House in 2024.

It doesn’t bother me in the least that he would drop out to concentrate on fighting the bucketloads of legal trouble standing before him.

Nor does it bother me were he to stay in. Why? Because the moron remains a highly beatable Republican nominee for POTUS if the GOP faithful is stupid enough to nominate him in 2024.

The first indictment from the Manhattan grand jury appears to be just the first of several such actions awaiting the ex-POTUS. The more serious charges — tampering with election results, inciting the insurrection on 1/6 and squirreling away classified documents — all are grounds for criminal prosecution … in my humble view.

Thus, it seems to me that it is unlikely that even this idiot can continue to campaign for the White House.

If he does, big fu***** deal!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Waiting for hell to freeze

Hell will have to fall into the deepest freeze imaginable for me to accept the poll findings that suggest that Donald Trump could actually defeat President Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup in 2024 for the White House.

For the ever-lovin’ life of me I cannot fathom where or how or who is supporting the twice-impeached former POTUS as he pretends to seek the presidency for the third time.

He slithered into the White House in 2017 after narrowly defeating Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote by 3 million ballots. Then he got thumped by Joe Biden in 2020, garnering 7 million fewer votes than the eventual president.

Between those two elections he got impeached twice by the House for violating his oath of office. He managed to piss off damn near every ally this nation has in the world. He vilified Americans who opposed his election. He went through four White House chiefs of staff, an untold number of Cabinet officials and behaved for all the world like a moron who didn’t know what the hell he was doing with all that executive power at his disposal.

Now he is on the verge of being indicted possibly by three prosecutors, two at the state level and then the U.S. attorney general.

Oh, did I mention the insurrection he incited on 1/6? There. I just did.

And yet he remains — reportedly — the favorite for the GOP presidential nomination next year. God help us all!

Trump said he’s going the distance regardless of any indictments that end up in his lap. Fine. I am just waiting for the hammer to drop on his severely coiffed noggin.

Someone among the officials examining the crimes I believe he committed is going to make history by indicting a former POTUS for the first time in our nation’s history. Look also for the others to follow suit when the first indictment falls out of the sky.

Meanwhile, someone will have to explain to me how this clown can pretend to be a serious contender for an office he damn near destroyed during the single term he occupied it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

political news

Has GOP gone mad?

For the life of me I cannot come to grips with the astonishing hold that a twice-impeached, likely-to-be-indicted former president of the U.S.A. has on the Republican Party.

I keep seeing these polls that suggest that the aforementioned disgrace continues to lead the GOP field in the preliminary jockeying for the 2024 party presidential nomination.

Maybe I should be thankful that Republicans continue to slobber over themselves at the notion that the party convention actually could nominate this moron in the summer of 2024.

It does make me wonder: What in the name of all that is holy has happened to a party that once was the champion of equal rights, of racial equality, of fiscal responsibility and adamant opposition to tyranny and tyrants?

It has been hijacked by a first-time politician who had no clue what to do when he got elected to the presidency in 2016 and then proceeded to engage in two impeachable offenses. The only thing that saved his sorry ass from being tossed out of office was that sickening loyalty he demanded from those in the Senate who refused to do the right thing and convict him of the crimes for which the House impeached him!

OK. I’ve gotten all of that off my chest. I am going to stand by my earlier assertion that I remain dubious that this idiot won’t be nominated.

But if he is … then my ol’ trick knee tells me there is no way on God’s good Earth that he will be elected. I just hope the trick knee doesn’t let me down.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

DeSantis: No. 1 GOP target

As I wend my way through Collin County’s back roads, I have seen precisely one 2024 campaign flag flapping in the North Texas breeze.

It has Ron DeSantis’s name on it; the flag flies in the yard of someone living off Farm to Market Road 546 between Princeton and McKinney.

So … with that I want to say a few words about the Florida governor who, I presume, is going to declare his candidacy for the presidency of the United States.

He’s every bit the charlatan as his political daddy, Donald J. Trump.

The dude wants to ban any discussion in Florida’s public schools about Black history. He has launched a “don’t say ‘gay'” campaign in the state’s public school system. DeSantis is dismissing the vaccines that have saved millions of American lives in the wake of the COVID pandemic. He attacks the mythical “critical race theory” curriculum he says is being taught.

The guy is a right-wing, MAGA-loving nut job of the first order.

In a way, though, I am kinda/sorta pulling for him to defeat Trump for the GOP nomination, although I cannot quite explain why. They’re both stomach-churning demagogues. Furthermore, I am still not yet convinced that Trump is going to get his campaign off the ground, given what I believe will be a series of criminal indictments coming down that will accuse him of some very serious crimes against the government he once swore to protect.

DeSantis, though, is a goofball who needs to be exposed for what he is. A fraud and a fruitcake.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

How does he do it?

How in the world — in the name of political sanity — can one explain Donald J. Trump’s bizarre hold on what remains of the Republican Party?

I keep seeing this polling data that has the the twice-impeached former president, who is headed for criminal indictment in the lead (for the moment) for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2024.

Maybe I should be applauding this idiocy. Maybe I should welcome the fact that Trump, who is severely weakened by his moronic behavior and the acknowledgement among many leading GOP pols that he is doomed to fail, might well steal the nomination next year.

Hey, I am biased to the max against this moron. But you know that already. I want President Biden to win re-election next year. I ought to welcome a Trump candidacy. It would be run the way the first two were conducted: slipshod, chaotic, no-preparation, no-platform.

Hey, dude won in 2016. I get that. He lost in 2020 because he couldn’t formulate a vision for the future and then has continued to promote The Big Lie about voter fraud that did not exist.

So, I am going to relax for just a bit and not worry about Trump’s seeming standing among Republicans, who apparently are so damn gullible that they well might nominate a certifiable idiot.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Can’t wait for Cruz to declare

Ted Cruz well might declare his intention to run for president of the United States for the second time.

Good. I look forward to his declaration that he intends to be elected commander in chief and head of state. Someone surely will be waiting in the weeds to reveal to the rest of the nation what the Texas Republican U.S. senator did in February 2021 when thousands of Texans were freezing in the Winter Storm of the Century.

You’ll recall he jetted off to Cancun, Mexico while hundreds of Texans were freezing to death. The media uncovered Cruz’s getaway, ratted him out and then he returned … only to blame his daughter for talking him into going to the warm Mexico beaches.

The man is numbskull of the first order.

He ran against the GOP field in 2016 and was the last contender standing in Donald Trump’s way before bowing out. He called Trump all but the spawn of Satan. Then he became part of Trump’s Senate suck-up squad in the Senate after Trump got elected in 2016.

The guy is a gutless wonder. Go ahead and declare your candidacy, Ted … and then be prepared to answer for your cowardice.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com