Tag Archives: 2020 election

Uncategorized

Do your duty, Mr. VPOTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Vice President Mike Pence has one more critical job awaiting him before he leaves office.

He is scheduled — but not required — to preside over a joint session of Congress which on Jan. 6 is going to receive the Electoral College certified tally of the presidential election. It will tally up the votes cast by the electors and then Pence, according to custom, will declare that Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris have been elected president and vice president of the United States of America.

What does the VP do?

That’s easy from my vantage point. He presides over the outcome and makes the declaration on behalf of Congress and the Electoral College.

He is likely, though, to wonder if that’s the correct choice. Of course it is! However, he is likely then to incur the wrath of the man Biden defeated, Donald J. Trump, who continues to bully fellow Republicans to continue resisting the obvious outcome of the election. Trump is seeking to cling to power.

He has lined up a number of GOP loony birds who have swallowed the swill he is serving, that he actually won. To their great credit, some Rs in Congress are urging Trump to give up the fight.

One prominent Republican happens to be Mike Pence, who on Jan. 6 had better do what he must do. If he cannot make the declaration we all intend to hear, he should stand down, step aside and let the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, make the call.

A small, but growing, part of me believes that VP Mike Pence will be AWOL when the moment arrives.

national news

Tuberville making an a** of himself

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama Republican who exhibited a profound ignorance of government while campaigning for the office to which he was elected, seeks to make a dubious spectacle of himself even before he takes his seat in the next Congress.

Tuberville couldn’t identify the three branches of the federal government but managed to get elected this year because he is a Republican in a deeply Republican state. Now he wants to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election.

Tuberville is hinting broadly that he intends to challenge the result when Congress meets Jan. 6 to ratify the Electoral College’s certification of Biden’s clear and decisive victory.

Good news, though. Senate Republicans are resisting Tuberville’s goofy notion that the election is illegitimate because of phony allegations of voter fraud.

He has joined another Alabama nut job, Rep. Mo Brooks, in challenging the results. If they succeed, the House and Senate will have to stage two-hour debates before deciding to do what they must, which is to declare President-elect Biden the winner.

We are being disserved by this kind of idiocy in the halls of our elected Congress.

 

national news

POTUS-elect: better man than most

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Biden is a far better man than I am.

Someone shoved a microphone in his face the other day to ask him to react to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s belated recognition that Biden, indeed, is the president-elect.

Biden’s response caught me by surprise. He said he had spoken with the Senate majority leader and thanked him for his congratulations … and then pledged to work closely with him on areas where the two men can find agreement.

What might my reaction be? It wouldn’t be nearly as magnanimous. For that matter, Donald Trump damn sure wouldn’t have been as gracious had he been the target of the well-chronicled suspicion that GOP politicians have leveled at the Democratic president-elect.

McConnell stood behind some phony excuse about letting the “process play out” before recognizing the obvious, which is that Joe Biden defeated Trump in the Nov. 3 election. After the Electoral College certified Biden’s win, only then did McConnell speak from the Senate floor to congratulate the president-elect.

Fiddlesticks, man!

local news

There you go, Rep. Taylor; that wasn’t so hard … was it?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

“Our Constitution defines the process for electing the president. Today, the Electoral College voted and on January 20th, President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. Anne and I extend our prayers and well wishes to the Biden and Harris families as they prepare for this momentous undertaking.”

— U.S. Rep. Van Taylor of Plano

There you have it. A freshman Republican congressman from the Metroplex has signed on to the notion that, by golly, Joseph R. Biden is going to take office as the next president of the United States.

Van Taylor happens to represent me in the U.S. House of Representatives. What astounds me at this moment in our nation’s history is that the media and other observers even have to ask members of Congress such an elementary question.

Taylor responded to a question from the Texas Tribune to our state’s entire congressional delegation: Do you accept Joe Biden as the president-elect?

Not all of the GOP-dominated delegation answered the question, which is their way of saying “no.” Taylor said “yes.” For that I am grateful and pleased.

As for the non-responders, which include Sen. Ted Cruz and the loony bin rep from East Texas, Louie Gohmert, I have nothing more to say other than this: Shame on you and shame on those who believe the bullsh** being fomented by Donald J. Trump about the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as president!

They have disgraced the beloved state and the nation they took an oath to serve.

national news

Trump elevates our awareness

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let us be clear headed and focused now on what we must do as a nation.

We have elected a new president and vice president of the United States. Today we witnessed in real time as the Electoral College certified the victory earned by President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Normally, this day would have come and gone and no one would have noticed.

Except that this year, thanks to the shenanigans launched by the man Biden defeated — Donald J. Trump — this constitutional duty came into sharp focus. You know what? That’s a good thing! It is good that Americans who take this process for granted now understand with a good bit more clarity how the framers set up this democratic system of ours.

I detest the shenanigans that Trump has sought to pull off. There has been a significant upside, though, if you consider that Americans are paying a good bit more attention to the democratic process.

Let me be clear on this point, too: The Electoral College actually worked damn well, unlike what happened in 2016 when Trump won the electoral vote majority while losing the actual vote to Hillary Clinton. This year, the president-elect’s Electoral College majority and his actual vote majority seem to mirror each other. I won’t call his victory a “landslide,” even though he rang up the same electoral vote total that Trump did four years ago. His victory, though, is significant.

We watched it play out. We paid attention to it. Under normal conditions, we wouldn’t have celebrated this certification the way many of us are doing. There ain’t anything normal about Donald Trump, which he has demonstrated repeatedly since the moment he became a politician.

So you see? Trump’s antics have produced something constructive: an appreciation of our great democratic process!

national news

Petulance becomes even more petty

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The longer Donald Trump continues his futile, feckless and reckless attack on the American democratic process the more petty he becomes.

The president of the United States is shrinking before our eyes.

The Electoral College voted today and certified Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the 46th president of the United States. Trump, meanwhile, is tweeting messages about how he has just begun to fight.

For what? For an office that is now officially out of reach?

The U.S. Constitution lays it out there. It is spelled out in the written word. The Electoral College determines who sits in president’s office. It won’t be Donald Trump after Jan. 20.

So the defeated president might continue to bluster and blather about alleged election thievery. It didn’t happen. Deep down in his gut Trump knows it, too.

It’s the  uncertainty of what might await him once he no longer is shielded by the trappings of immense power that seems to be driving this petty petulance.

It’s over, Mr. POTUS. Pack your bags and hit the road … for keeps.

national news

How will Trump react to the next nail in his political coffin?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One of the zillions of things I won’t miss when Donald Trump is no longer president is awaiting his reaction to matters involving his political future.

Example: The Electoral College is voting Monday on who will become the next president. Spoiler alert: It won’t be Donald Trump.

No, the Electoral College — as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution — will cast its pledged votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who won the presidency on Nov. 3. Biden has rolled up a 7-million vote margin over Trump, winning 306 electoral votes.

The Electoral College, which comprises delegates from all the states, will certify the election Monday.

What does Trump do? How will he react when the Electoral College certifies what everyone on Planet Earth knows what occurred? That remains to be seen and heard. Trump has mounted more than 50 legal challenges. He has lost all but one of them. The latest defeat came when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sought to get the votes of four states overthrown.

Trump keeps tweeting that he’ll continue fighting to keep his job. He continues to insist the election was “rigged.” He produces no evidence of the scurrilous allegation.

The Electoral College certification would appear to be the final scene in the final act of this ghastly drama. Oh, how I hope that’s the case. However, we are dealing with a lunatic in the body of the man who has lost a presidential election.

Let us stay tuned.

legal news

My thoughts exactly …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A member of my family, a highly educated man who lives in the Pacific Northwest, sent me an email today that asks: What the hell is going on down there?

I’m trying to figure it out.

He is referring to Ken Paxton, our state attorney general, who filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court that sought to give Texas the right to tell other states how to run their elections. The four states in question, I hasten to add, all voted for President-elect Joe Biden. Paxton sought to order the states to toss out those Biden votes and then endorse Donald Trump for re-election.

The SCOTUS said “no can do.” Paxton doesn’t have the standing to make that demand, justices said.

I would have hoped the high court’s dismissal of Paxton’s idiocy would spell the end of Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Silly me. It ain’t happening … at least not yet.

Meanwhile, Paxton vows to keep fighting. For what, I have no clue. The SCOTUS is at the very tippy-top of the judicial chain of command in this country.

Now the AG is turning Texas into a laughingstock. Who out there is laughing? I mean, really! It ain’t funny, folks. Some of us in Texas are embarrassed beyond measure at what our state’s top legal eagle is trying to do.

Consider that he’s already indicted for securities fraud and is awaiting trial in state court. Plus, the FBI has subpoenaed records from his office as part of a federal probe brought forward by seven assistant AGs who blew the whistle on what they allege is criminal behavior by Paxton.

How in the world this guy, Paxton, got elected as AG in the first place is beyond me, let alone re-elected four years later.

My dear family member, I am sad to admit, has asked me a question for which I have no good answer. I do not know what the hell is going on here. 

national news

Legal wrangling produces a benefit for ordinary folks

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

All this wrangling about an election that took place freely, fairly and securely has produced at least one positive benefit for those of us sitting out here in the Peanut Gallery.

It has awakened our awareness of what the U.S. Constitution says about elections and about how strong and sturdy the nation’s governmental document framework remains.

Ken Paxton concocted a phony argument that went straight to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Texas attorney general, who’s turned our state into an international laughingstock, challenged the presidential election results in four states; none of them was Texas. The states all voted favorably for President-elect Joe Biden. The nation’s high court tossed Paxton’s lawsuit without argument.

What we learned is that the Constitution is crystal clear about national elections. It is that states retain the sole authority to conduct they way they elect presidents. Attorneys general, such as Paxton, cannot intrude on those states’ business.

Yes, I knew all of that intellectually. What is gratifying as a political junkie, though, is that the SCOTUS decision drags this issue into the glaring spotlight of international attention. We also have been exposed to the rank hypocrisy of politicians who, under previously “normal” circumstances, would stand foursquare behind Article II of the Constitution, which grants this electoral power to the states.

These aren’t normal times. The Republican Party has become the Donald Trump Party and is beholden — ironically, I should add — to someone who doesn’t give a sh** about anyone other than himself.

As we watch this needless, senseless, feckless and reckless drama play out, I am heartened by the knowledge we are gaining about the government our founders created. They didn’t create a perfect system for us to follow. Then again, they only sought to create a “more perfect Union.”

It has been made a good bit more perfect as this spectacle staggers toward its conclusion … which will occur on Jan. 20 the moment President Biden takes his hand off the Bible.

local news

Lights bring smiles

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Farmersville (Texas) Mayor Bryon Wiebold had this notion that one way to bring smiles to the faces of community residents who have endured one of the most miserable years in memory was to light up the city he leads with Christmas lights.

So, he persuaded the City Council to approve a resolution establishing a program called Farmersville Lights. Judging from what I saw tonight while touring Farmersville Parkway and the downtown square is that the mayor’s idea is paying off … in spades!

The city turned on the lights on Dec. 1. They’ll shine in the city until the end of the month. Wiebold hopes it becomes an annual event. I share his hope for a bright future for Farmersville and its effort to bring a little holiday cheer to its residents and those of us who come to visit the city and enjoy the lights.

Indeed, my wife and I drove from our home in Princeton and, oh yes, we had our granddaughter and her parents, who came from Allen to take a peek at the holiday lights.

Farmersville Lights is being financed through a number of donations from businesses throughout the city. Wiebold received commitments for sponsorships, went to the council for its approval and the program took off.

I want to offer a round of applause for the City Council’s endorsement of the mayor’s idea. Rest assured, I saw more than a few smiles on the faces of those who enjoyed the lights as this lousy year draws to a welcome close.

I have this sense that a lot of communities all across our great land are reaping the benefits of similar programs this time of year. I mean, when we endure a nasty presidential election in the midst of a deadly pandemic, how can any city in America miss the chance to put smiles on people’s faces?

Well done, Mr. Mayor and City Council!