Monthly Archives: January 2021

national news

Unify Congress? Hah! Good luck

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s stated intention to “unify” the nation is facing a major hurdle very close to the president’s new home.

Just down the street from the White house sits Congress. Its members are at each others’ throats. Democrats are angry and some are frightened of their Republican colleagues. Why? Because many of them have given tacit approval of the insurrection that could have produced casualties among members of Congress.

Meanwhile, GOP members are continuing their harangue against the election that President Biden won over Donald Trump.

Some members of Congress don’t want to work with their colleagues. Many of them want their offices relocated because of actual fear of how their colleagues might treat them.

Yes, there is a serious rift opening wide among members of Congress. As Politico has reported: Some House lawmakers are privately refusing to work with each other. Others are afraid to be in the same room. Two members almost got into a fist fight on the floor. And the speaker of the House is warning that “the enemy is within.”

Forget Joe Biden’s calls for unity. Members of Congress couldn’t be further divided.

‘I’m just furious’: Relations in Congress crack after attack – POLITICO

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared that the “enemy is within” the halls of Congress. She is specifically pointedly of some House members who adhere to the QAnon lunacy that school shootings are hoaxes and that Muslims cannot serve in public office. Pressure is building to a full boil among Democrats to expel Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia, who said during the 2020 campaign that it is time to “shed blood” to reverse trends she opposes.

I want Joe Biden to succeed in unifying the country. I do not have an idea on how he should do so, other than for him to call on senior Republicans in the House and Senate — men and women he knows well — to persuade them to close the yawning divide between the parties.

It’s just that the president has to start seeking unity in the other co-equal government branch.

media news

Here’s how you brief the press

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If I could, I would direct this brief message to the four people who served as press secretary during Donald Trump’s term as president.

They are, in order, Sean Spicer, Sara H. Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany. They all fluffed the job of briefing the press on issues relating to the presidency; indeed, Grisham didn’t conduct a single briefing before she quit to join the first lady’s staff. They should take heed of the manner that the current press flack, Jen Psaki, is doing her job on behalf of President Biden.

To be sure — and to be fair — the press gathered in front of Psaki has been fairly tame in tossing questions at her. There hasn’t been the in-your-face kind of interrogation we saw so often during the Trump years. Then again, the media haven’t been lied to as baldly and blatantly as they were for the previous four years.

Do you remember Sean Spicer’s initial press briefing? Here’s a reminder: He told the country that Donald Trump delivered his inaugural speech before the largest crowd in presidential inaugural history. Except that it wasn’t the largest crowd. It was a fraction of the size of either of President Barack Obama’s inaugural audiences.

So … there you go. Right out of the chute, the White House press flack for Donald Trump lied to the public, more than likely at the behest of Donald Trump his own self.

You will not hear, I am willing to wager, President Biden label the media as the “enemy of the people.” Donald Trump played the media like a fiddle before he was elected, then demonized them when they questioned him aggressively about the lies he continued to spew.

Joe Biden’s press secretary — Jen Psaki — is restoring the value of the White House press briefings.

legal news, local news

Jury duty will have to wait

JPhoto by Jason Doiy
By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

An automated phone call this afternoon dashed my hopes … yet again!

I had hoped to be called for jury duty next week when I reported to the Collin County administration building. Alas, it won’t happen. The call came to inform me that I was being dismissed, that my services are not required.

Maybe next time, yes? Perhaps? Do ya think?

This is a big deal for me. I have always wanted to serve on a trial jury. Not because I lust for the duty. It’s just that I always have wondered to myself what happens in a jury room when a group of men and women gather to ponder how a particular case — civil or criminal — should go. I guess it’s the reporter in me, the nosey, inquisitive side of my persona that drives this interest.

Then again, perhaps I can blame the career I pursued for nearly 37 years as one reason why I never have been called.

When we lived in Randall County, Texas, I would get a summons. I would call the day prior and the automated system would tell me not to bother.

I did serve on a grand jury in Randall County for a period of time. That was a fascinating call to duty. I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent in the jury room pondering whether to indict someone on a criminal complaint. When we were sworn in by the presiding judge, though, I recall vividly something the district attorney at the time told us. James Farren said we likely never would be summoned for trial jury duty in Randall County because of our grand jury service. Why? Defense attorneys would strike us because they could argue we are prejudiced in favor of the prosecuting side. Oh, well.

We moved from Randall County to Collin County. I want to wipe the slate clean.

However, the call won’t come this time. Again!

I’ll have to wait for another summons. I hope to serve on a trial jury before I check out of this world.

local news, State news

Sighing in relief … sort of

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A half-hearted sigh of relief is in order.

While most of the nation reels from the publicity surrounding the far right wing nut jobs who are dominating some of our news cycles, I am relieved to realize that my member of Congress — the young man who represents my family and me in Collin County, Texas — is not among the wackos.

Rep. Van Taylor is a Republican from Plano who is serving his second term. He succeeded a legend in these parts, the late GOP U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, a former Vietnam War prisoner and a longtime Republican stalwart.

Taylor, too, is a veteran. He served as a Marine Corps officer in Iraq. He is a patriot who never, ever — in my humble view — subscribe to the disgraceful ideology ascribed to QAnon adherents who represent other congressional districts.

And for that I am grateful.

Now, having lauded my congressman, I want to offer just a few brief words of condemnation to our state’s junior U.S. senator, Ted Cruz.

The Cruz Missile dishonored the state and the office he occupies by insisting on an audit of the 2020 presidential election. He still to this very day hasn’t even had the decency to refer to President Biden by name and title, which he acquired in a free, fair and totally secure election.

Cruz has swallowed the Big Lie served up by the former president of the United States, and he makes me ashamed that he represents my interests in the Senate.

So, we have the good and the not so good. I will cling to the belief that Rep. Van Taylor will continue to adhere to honest and well-considered principle. I might disagree with him most of the time. I honor the fealty he pays to the U.S. Constitution and to the oath he took to defend and protect it.

State news

Abbott vs. O’Rourke in ’22?

Photo by Richard W. Rodriguez/AP/REX/Shutterstock 

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Gosh, we just finished a contentious presidential election that produced a violent transition of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Now it’s time to look just a bit ahead to 2022 and what is shaping up here in Texas. A potential donnybrook between Gov. Greg Abbott and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke.

Oh, boy. Pass the popcorn.

O’Rourke spilled some of the beans when he told an El Paso radio station that he might run for governor in 2022, seeking to generate the excitement he ginned up when he almost defeated U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. Unfortunately for O’Rourke, the Texas buzz didn’t play on the national stage as he sought the presidency in 2020; he dropped out early from the Democratic Party primary contest.

He did make some news, though, he declared “Hell yes,” he intends to take away people’s AR-15 assault weapons.

Abbott wasted no time capitalizing on that exclamation, declaring that O’Rourke would seek to do that very thing in gun-loving Texas if he is elected governor.

As the Texas Tribune reported: “You’re talking about a person who says they want to run for governor who said, ‘Heck yes,’ he’s gonna come and take your guns,” Abbott said, referring to O’Rourke’s 2019 embrace of a mandatory buyback program for assault weapons. “Heck yes, he’s for open borders. Heck yes, he’s for killing the energy sector and fossil fuels in the state of Texas. I don’t think that’s gonna sell real well.”

Greg Abbott, Beto O’Rourke trade barbs over talk of 2022 governor’s race | The Texas Tribune

Here we go. The demagoguery has begun in earnest. Open borders? Killing the fossil fuel energy sector? Does the governor of this state have that kind of exclusive power? Um … no.

As for the gun buyback, the governor cannot do that by himself, either. No governor is “gonna come and take your guns.”

I do hope to see an Abbott-O’Rourke contest in 2022, even if it includes the frightening rhetoric we’re already getting.

national news

QAnon poses dire threat

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Where in the world did QAnon come from and how in the world does it command the kind of attention it is getting these days?

It came from the deep recesses of human beings’ spirit and I suppose its attention is driven by the preponderance of social media in modern society.

I am happy to report that I do not believe anyone close to me adheres to the idiocy that the conspiracy theorists who populate this uber-fringe movement. If anyone surfaces I will be triple-damn sure to educate them quickly about the folly of what they espouse.

However, they are in Congress. They occupy seats in state legislatures; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of QAnon goofballs sitting in the Texas Legislature at this moment discussing and enacting measures aimed at governing how my family and I live.

QAnon comprises morons who subscribe to the nuttiest notions possible. They want to execute those with whom they disagree; they say Muslims are unfit to hold public office; they believe the government is coming after every gun in America; they have sought to debunk tragic events, such as school and church shootings, calling them hoaxes and made-up events; they deny that the Holocaust occurred; oh, and they blather this nonsense in the name of Christianity and patriotism.

Is there anything more un-Christian and unpatriotic than to hear someone say we should kill elected leaders?

QAnon supporters were among the terrorists who stormed Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January. They wielded flagpoles as weapons they used against police officers. They were heard yelling “Hang Mike Pence!” which was a direct threat to the life of the sitting vice president of the United States.

They need to be rooted out, exposed and booted from their elected office one way or another. Governing bodies — such as Congress or legislatures — can expel them. Voters need to be persuaded of the utter madness associated with sending them to office in the first place … and then they must act to rectify the grievous error they committed.

I had hoped we had eliminated the fright associated with Donald Trump serving as president when he left the White House for the final time. Silly me. We have a good bit more work to do to restore our national soul.

national news

No more POTUS spin in briefing room

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden made a hefty number of promises while campaigning for the office he won.

One of them involved his commitment to listening to the “science” as it regards the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

So … with that he said he wouldn’t step to the White House briefing room podium and try to speak on issues about which he knows nothing. The pandemic virus continues to rage across the nation. Joe Biden isn’t being seen at the briefing room rostrum talking about the virus, thinking out loud about possible “cures,” such as whether one could inject or ingest cleaning fluid that would wipe out the virus just like that.

Yes, until Jan. 20, we had a president who did that. He is now gone from office. President Biden is letting the scientists and the medical doctors speak on the details of the fight that continues.

I know we shouldn’t relish what should be taken as normal behavior by a president. It is difficult to resist commenting on it given the incessant pattern of lies and misstatements that came from President Biden’s immediate predecessor.

Indeed, it wasn’t as if I could take anything that Donald Trump ever told me seriously. I grew early in his term to disbelieve every single statement that he sputtered out.

The new president isn’t likely to create that credibility misery by saying things out loud that he has no business saying. President Biden will let the scientists speak about matters they studied. They are the folks with knowledge to pass on what they know to be true.

national news

QAnon infects our politics

Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Time for another fusillade against a QAnon-believing member of Congress.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene has become — with justification — the embodiment of what is wrong with many elements of the modern Republican Party.

Taylor-Greene is on record saying some of the most outrageous statements imaginable. Such as this piece of dookey: that the massacre of first- and second-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School and high schoolers at Marjorie Stoneman High School were made up, that they didn’t happen.

So, what does the House GOP leadership do? It places her sorry a** on the House Education Committee.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has yet to condemn the frothing rambling of this moron. He has given her a forum to further her idiocy on a committee that helps set federal public education policy that affects the very children threatened by the violence that the Georgia Republican lawmaker helped incite on the Sixth of January.

Taylor-Greene is about as un-American, un-democratic, unpatriotic an individual as I ever have witnessed, albeit from a safe distance far away from Capitol Hill and from this idiot’s Georgia congressional district.

Taylor-Greene, though, is far from the only danger to the democracy now serving in the U.S. House. Mo Brooks is another Republican, from Alabama, who stood among the terrorists who stormed Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January. He wasn’t seen smashing windows or beating security officers with flagpoles or hurling fire extinguishers at Capitol Police officers. He did, though, incite violence by cheering the garbage spewed by Donald J. Trump.

I am among those American patriots who is ready to welcome a new day on Capitol Hill. That day already has dawned in the White House, with the expulsion of Donald Trump and the election of Joe Biden. Congress, though, is still infected with morons/imbeciles/nut jobs who have the power to enact laws that affect the rest of us.

I am not proposing to censor or stamp out opinions with which I disagree. I do condemn in the strongest language I can muster the astonishing notions that pour forth from individuals who espouse certifiably insane notions.

Marjorie Taylor-Greene is one of them.

There. I am done with this numbskull. For now!

national news

No end yet to angry rhetoric

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It was too much to expect a quick fix, an early and immediate end to the angry rhetoric that accompanied the tenure of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Perhaps it was naive to expect such a miraculous occurrence.

Still, with President Biden’s aggressive approach to dealing with the myriad crises confronting the nation, I had a smidgen of hope that there might be some relief from the white-hot expressions coming from those on the right, the far right and from the political loony bin.

One week into the Biden presidency, I continue to wait for the relief. I fear it’s going to take a long while.

We keep hearing from the QAnon nut jobs who were elected to Congress. The Trumpkin Corps keeps yammering about how their voices will not be stilled, that by golly, more than 74 million of them cast their ballots for The Donald. They ignore the obvious, which is that President Biden collected 81 million-plus votes. And … he rolled up 306 Electoral College votes, the same number Trump pulled in four years earlier; remember, too, that Trump called his victory in 2016 over Hillary Clinton a “landslide,” which of course it was nothing of the sort.

My sincere eternal hope is that we can restore much more civility to our discourse than we have seen and heard during the Trump Era. Donald Trump is vanquished from the White House. His minions in Congress remain in office. They continue to whoop and holler about vote fraud. They bitch about Joe Biden’s aggressive use of executive orders. They gripe about his big and bold ideas to salvage our economy. The lunatics among them keep using social media to harp on conspiracy theories resulting from all the lies that Trump fed them.

The tone will improve. That’s my hope. I await the day I when can call it my expectation.

local news

COVID vaccine awaits

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Somewhere on a tray full of little medicine bottles there is a dose of medicine with my name on it.

I’ll find it Friday. It sits in the Department of Veterans Affairs medical complex in south Dallas. I will arrive Friday afternoon to receive the first of two doses of vaccine aimed at preventing me from contracting a disease that has killed more than 400,000 Americans … and could have taken the life of someone with whom I am quite close.

I had received a recorded phone call Wednesday evening. The VA automated voice told me to call a phone number to make an appointment for the vaccine. I did as I was instructed today.

My wife and I have been on a Collin County wait list. I decided to take the VA up on its offer for a vaccine. My wife is still on the list but we remain hopeful that the county will call soon to let her know that her name has been called and she, too, can be protected against the COVID pandemic virus.

I feel the need to speak kindly of the Department of Veterans Affairs. I enrolled in the VA program in Amarillo about six or seven years ago. The care I received at the Thomas Creek Medical Center in Amarillo was exemplary. We moved from the Panhandle to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in 2018 and I transferred my VA care to the Sam Rayburn Medical Center in Bonham. My care continues to be stellar.

I say this because the VA has been panned by some in recent years. I remember, of course, the scandal that rocked the agency during the Obama administration, with veterans dying while awaiting medical attention that required urgent response. We don’t hear of such tragedy these days.

For me, the issue has centered on routine care. I have been fortunate in that I enjoy relatively good health. I have encountered no medical emergencies. I rely on the VA to be my go-to source for medical care.

So, with that I want to declare this small victory in the fight against the pandemic. We still intend to follow the prevention protocols to the letter. This is no time to let up.