Tag Archives: insurrection

national news, political news

How do you campaign on Trump coattails?

Harriet Hageman is likely to become the next Republican nominee to run for Wyoming’s sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

If she defeats Rep. Liz Cheney in today’s GOP primary, she’s a sure bet to win the election this November against whomever Democrats nominate.

It causes me to wonder: How has Hageman campaigned against Cheney, whose only “sin” as I see it is that she has been highly critical of Donald Trump’s criminal behavior while he masqueraded as president of the U.S.A.

In latest primary night, 2 Trump critics face voters as Palin eyes a comeback (msn.com)

So, what does a Harriet Hageman stump speech sound like?

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Harriet Hageman and I am running as the protector of a twice-impeached U.S. president.

My opponent, Liz Cheney, has betrayed her office by standing for the rule of law. She has declared her intention to do all she can to keep the former president from getting anywhere near the Oval Office.  That is unacceptable!

Her voting record in Congress? That doesn’t matter. Nor does it matter that she voted with Donald Trump more than 92% of the time. Or that she has been adamantly pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, fervently anti-tax and equally fervently anti-Obamacare. 

Has she represented the will of our state? No. Because she won’t profess fealty to Donald Trump.

***

That, of course, is an absurd example of how Hageman has campaigned for the office. I just don’t know how she can be “more conservative” than Liz Cheney, or how she can justify running against a House member who is faithful to her party’s long-standing platform of favoring the rule of law.

If the polls are correct, and I tend to believe they are, then the rest of the country is going to see what happens to a politician who is (a) faithful to her oath and (b) critical of a president who is faithful only to his own lust for power.

These primary voters will be forever cast in shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

There’s no talking to them

I am going to wave a white flag of surrender. I give up. I no longer can — nor will I — seek to persuade the Donald Trump cabal of cultists that they are wrong in clinging to their man’s world view … whatever the hell it is!

Truth be told, I made that decision some time ago. I don’t think I have declared my intention publicly, out loud, for all the world to hear.

I have a few critics of this blog who weigh in when I have something critical to say about their hero. As a general rule, I don’t engage them in debate.

Which brings me to my point: which is that there is no point in arguing with someone whose mind is made up, who does not listen or comprehend what I know to be the truth about their guy.

He is, as Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — a fellow Republican — said in 2016 a “phony” and a “fraud.” He cannot tell the truth. However, the sad reality is that truth-telling doesn’t matter to the cult cabal. They buy into his lies, they repeat them and then dare the rest of us to challenge them. I can challenge the lies, but I cannot challenge the purveyors of the falsehoods.

You’ve heard the saying — or something like it — that warns against trying to talk sense into someone who is blind to any possibility that their guy suffers a fatal flaw. That, in my view, sums up the Trump cabal.

I know what you might be thinking: If I am going to accuse the Trumpkins of being blind to the truth, am I as equally blind to the views expressed on the other side of the great divide?

Not a chance. They are wrong.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Oh, the irony of it all

The irony in the partisan reaction to the FBI decision to search Donald Trump’s luxurious pad for documents he wasn’t supposed to take from the White House is just too rich to ignore.

There once was a time when Republicans were seen as belonging to the party of law and order. Yep, the GOP once cheered the cops’ efforts to root out crime. The party once took no prisoners. It said “hang ’em high.”

So, what’s happened in the day or two since the FBI search? Republicans are now accusing the feds of planting evidence. They accuse the FBI and the Justice Department of conspiring to make up a pretext to send the former president to jail in leg irons.

What the hell … ?

The FBI obtained a search warrant using legal means. It persuaded a federal judicial magistrate that it had “probable cause” to believe a crime had been committed. The judge issued the warrant. The G-men and women went to Trump’s glitzy joint and left with about a dozen boxes of documents.

Republicans formerly cheered the feds when they performed these duties. Now they have rallied behind a cult figure and are leveling preposterous allegations against the FBI.

Astonishing, man!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Uh, Newt? They can do nothing to me!

Newt Gingrich is grasping at anything to minimize the stunning news overnight that the FBI has searched the Florida home of Donald J. Trump for evidence that he might have committed a crime — or three — while serving as president of the United States.

The Republican fire-breather/former speaker of the House said this: “I think what’s even more troubling and what every American, whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, doesn’t matter, liberal, conservative, doesn’t matter. If 30 FBI agents can take over the house of a former President of the United States and probable candidate for president, what can they do to you?”

I can answer Newtie’s question. Are you ready?

The FBI can’t do a damn thing to any American if they haven’t broken federal laws.

Gingrich: If FBI Agents Can Raid The Former President, What Can They Do To You? | Video | RealClearPolitics

What fu**ing difference does it make if the subject of a federal investigation is a former POTUS or someone who might be a candidate for the office?

Attorney General Merrick Garland has spoken with crystal clarity on the subject of his investigation into the events of 1/6, its aftermath and its causes. “No one is above the law,” Garland said. He clarified that statement by declaring, “I mean, ‘no one’ is above the law.”

The issue isn’t about “control” of our lives, or about bullying of a president who well might have broken several laws. It is about whether our democratic system of government is worth protecting against those who would seek to destroy it.

Newt Gingrich is entitled to his opinion. I am entitled to mine. They differ. I happen to believe I am correct and Newtie is wrong.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

DOJ makes history!

Donald J. Trump is correct. The search of his home in Florida is the “first time in history” that the FBI has conducted such an operation against a former U.S. president.

There. Now that we have that out of the way, I want to make sure we all understand something else.

Trump is the first president to resist the peaceful transfer of power to a new administration; he is the first president to have incited an attack on the Capitol; he is the first president to have demanded that states “find” votes to reverse the outcome of an election; he is the first president to have been accused of taking top-secret documents out of the White House illegally.

So, is the FBI search legal? Yes. It is. The Justice Department obtained approval from a federal judge to proceed with the search. The FBI needed to demonstrate “probable cause” to believe a crime has been committed, and it did in the eyes of the judge who issued the search warrant.

Trump’s assertion that he now is the first president in U.S. history to have been subjected to this kind of legal action is correct.

However, he deserves it!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

If only he hadn’t lied

This makes me so mad I could just spit. Dick Cheney came to his daughter’s defense with a stellar argument that called Donald John Trump a “coward” who “lies to his supporters.”

The former vice president of the United States said a “real man” wouldn’t lie the way Trump does.

Of course he is right! I would be leading the cheers for the former VP who served for two terms during George W. Bush’s presidency, except for this little thing. Dick Cheney also is a liar.

I don’t say this with any sort of cavalier attitude. I want the former veep’s ad to sway voters to his daughter’s corner as she battles for re-election to the U.S. House seat that her father occupied before taking on the job of White House chief of staff for President Ford.

Dick Cheney, though, spooned up a major dose of snake oil when George W. Bush became president. He persuaded the president that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, chemicals that it would use against us. He also told us that Saddam Hussein — the late Iraqi dictator — played a role in the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York City. Neither allegation was true.

We went to war with Iraq in March 2003 and lost nearly 5,000 American lives in the process. And for what purpose? To retaliate for lies conveyed by the then-vice president and others within the Bush administration.

This is the kind of thing that sticks to people’s backsides. It’s indelible. No matter how much Dick Cheney might pretend to be a man of high honor and integrity — who tells the truth all the time — we cannot deny that he lied about WMD and the culprits behind 9/11.

I just wish Liz Cheney could have found another ally to launch this attack on Donald Trump.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Go for it, Liz!

Liz Cheney well might find out that being a lame-duck member of Congress has an advantage or two … such as freeing her from the threat of political blowback as she seeks to find the truth behind a president’s corruption.

The New York Times is reporting that Cheney will continue on her crusade to keep Donald J. Trump far away from the Oval Office even if she loses her Republican Party primary race next week.

Cheney is running for re-election to her fourth term in the House. She has signed on to the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection. Cheney has left no doubt as to her belief that Trump is responsible for the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has said out loud that the Justice Department must find evidence to indict the ex-POTUS.

The Trump-backed Republican is favored to defeat Cheney next week. I am not going to take that outcome to the proverbial bank just yet, although I acknowledge that it doesn’t look good for Rep. Cheney at the moment.

Accordingly, lame-duck status would seem to fit Cheney quite well. It will free her to speak even more bluntly — if that is even possible — about the corrupt and criminal intent she and others on the panel have found.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Wait for RINO epithets

Wait for it. They will come in due course, if they haven’t already been pouring in at Liz Cheney’s congressional re-election campaign office.

Rep. Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is featured in a political ad in which he calls Donald J. Trump the “greatest threat to democracy” in the nation’s history.

You know what’s coming next, right? There will be exclamations from the Trump cultists that Dick Cheney’s views don’t matter, and that he’s a Republican In Name Only. Yep, Daddy Dick Cheney is a RINO in the eyes of those who continue to coalesce around Donald Trump.

Dick Cheney proclaims his pride in his daughter Liz’s efforts to expose Trump as the crooked fraud that he is.

The elder Cheney is trying to get his daughter re-elected to the House seat from Wyoming, the very seat Dick Cheney occupied before he left Congress to become White House chief of staff for President Ford. He then served as defense secretary for President George H.W. Bush before being tapped to run as VP with “W.”

The thing is, Dick Cheney also is right when he calls Trump a “coward” because he lies to his supporters about the so-called theft of the 2020 presidential election. The former VP says, instead, that Trump is the electoral thief, seeking to reverse the results of an election he lost handily.

I haven’t cheered much for Dick Cheney ever since he coerced President George W. Bush into going to war with Iraq on the false claim that the Iraqis played a role in events of 9/11; they played no role!

However, the ad he has participated in on behalf of his daughter give me pause to offer some much-appreciated praise for the man once called “the shadow president” during the two terms of the Bush administration.

Will the ad turn the tables and breathe enough life into Cheney’s campaign to resurrect it? It’s not likely. Then again, we ought to consider tossing the conventional political playbook into the crapper.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Changing tune on panel timetable

Once, not long ago, I was yammering about the length of time the House select committee was taking as it examined the 1/6 insurrection on Capitol Hill.

I am changing my tune. I no longer am as concerned about the time it is taking for the committee to do its job. It has more work to complete. The immediate past president of the U.S. is in trouble — it seems to me. The panel must finish its work completely, assemble its findings and then report to the nation what it has determined.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland keeps reminding us that “no one is above the law” and that he will follow the evidence wherever it leads before deciding on indictments. When someone says that “no one is above the law,” I am going to presume he means, well, “no one.” That includes the former POTUS. Do I have that right? I hope you think so, too.

The finished product of this exhaustive hearing must include remedies for preventing the 1/6 insurrection from recurring.

Now, having said that I am changing my tune about the select committee’s timetable, I am not going to say it should go on forever. Time isn’t exactly in the committee’s corner. The midterm election in November could produce a change of legislative control when the next Congress convenes. The House may shift from Democratic to Republican control. I say “may shift” because that might not be the slam-dunk the GOP had hoped would occur.

With that, it still would be good for the current committee, chaired by Democrat Bennie Thompson, to finish its work prior to the midterm election and certainly before the next Congress takes its oath.

But don’t rush it, ladies and gentlemen?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, national security

Domestic terrorist gets 7 years in prison … yes!

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Guy Reffitt can now join an infamous — and likely growing — list of Americans who have been sent to the Big House for working to overturn the results of a free, fair and legal presidential election.

Reffitt lives just across Lake Lavon from your friendly blogger in Wylie, Texas. Today, he got slightly more than seven years in a federal prison for his role in whipping up the 1/6 insurrection attackers.

Reffitt didn’t actually enter the Capitol Building during the attack. He just whipped the crowd into a frenzy from outside the halls of power.

Texan Guy Reffitt sentenced to 7 1/4 years in prison for Jan. 6 riot | The Texas Tribune

His sentence, by the way, is the longest prison term handed out, so far, by a trial jury. So, this terrorist has set a record I am sure he would rather not possess. That is just too damn bad.

The Texas Tribune reported: “Reffitt sought not just to stop Congress, but also to physically attack, remove, and replace the legislators who were serving in Congress. This is a quintessential example of an intent to both influence and retaliate against government conduct through intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.

It is good to see the wheels of justice continuing to grind along.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com