Tag Archives: 2020 election

legal news

SCOTUS delivers the KO

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am worn out, bushed, whipped, exhausted by all this legal wrangling, which means I am delighted beyond belief that the U.S. Supreme Court has put an end to Donald Trump’s challenge of a free and fair presidential election.

Oh, wait. I should mention that Trump lost that election. President-elect Joe Biden will take office in about 39 days.

SCOTUS rejected a specious lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to get four states to throw out their election returns that went favorably toward Biden. The high court, in a brief summary statement, said that Texas could not interfere in other states’ electoral process.

Ba da boom!

More to the point, the court ruling stated  that Texas lacked standing to pursue the case, saying it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”

This is the end of the road for Donald Trump, for his Trumpkin toadies, his cult of personality followers.

The lesson once again comes in the form of the strongly conservative court ruling with dispassionate analysis what almost every legal scholar in the land had predicted it would rule.

My advice now for Donald Trump: Shut the hell up about an election you lost; accept the results … and go away.

legal news

Sanity must prevail … or else

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am a firm believer in judicial sanity, which is to say that sane minds are likely to prevail in the face of insane legal challenges.

Thus, we have a U.S. Supreme Court roster of justices who will get to decide whether a lawsuit brought forward by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has merit and is worth hearing.

Judicial sanity would seem to dictate that this is a slam dunk for the nation’s highest court. It should toss the matter aside. My hope for the sake of judicial sanity prevailing is that it does so with a terse statement that says in effect: Texas has no standing to bring this case to this court.

Paxton, who appears to be a lousy lawyer, wants the SCOTUS to overturn the results of four states that voted Nov. 3 for President-elect Joe Biden. From the get-go my question has been this: How in the name of election meddling can one state purport to intervene in the electoral affairs of another state? 

Therein might lie the case for judicial sanity presenting itself. The high court should tell AG Paxton to mind his own bee’s wax and butt the hell out. He cannot bring a lawsuit against four states that all have certified the results of their presidential balloting results.

I would say that sanity is a sure thing to prevail, except for this: 17 states’ attorneys general have joined Paxton’s clown show and signed on as intervenors in this idiotic lawsuit. All the AGs have swilled the Donald Trump Kool-Aid and are seeking — and this is as rich as it gets — to overturn the legitimate electoral results of a free and fair election.

I believe in the U.S. Constitution. I believe in the power of reason. I continue to believe that judicial sanity is going to have the final say on this profoundly un-American legal challenge.

national news

Trump testing faith in strength of U.S. Constitution

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump is testing my resolve, my belief in the strength of the U.S. Constitution.

I don’t expect that faith to collapse. I do not expect the defeated president to prevail in his effort to undermine, subvert and destroy our democratic form of government.

I say all that, though, while expressing concern about the course this post-election fire fight is going. It’s making me nervous.

Seventeen states joined the moronic Texas lawsuit that seeks to overturn the election results of four states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden. They’re all states that voted for Trump. They all are governed by those with the same imbecilic view that the election was stolen from Trump by “widespread vote fraud.”

Dammit to hell! There was no such thing! Joe Biden won a free, fair and honest election. Fair and square! If the U.S. attorney general, William Barr — who’s served as Trump’s water carrier — says so, then it must be true. Isn’t that right?

Donald Trump is making a shambles of this transition, which historically has been done without malice, with no outward anger. Not this time. Trump is clinging desperately to an illusion and he’s making a mockery of our sacred political institutions.

Moreover, he is embarrassing the nation he was elected in 2016 to govern. Our allies are laughing at us; our foes are relishing the confusion and discord he is sowing.

This likely will end OK. Joe Biden will take the presidential oath on Jan. 20. He will get to work. I am less confident today than I was a few days or weeks ago about the outcome of this protracted battle. I retain my faith in the U.S. Constitution and the sturdiness of the framework that our founders built.

But … dang! Donald Trump is making it harder to maintain my eternal optimism.

national news

Country already scored a ‘victory’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump fired off this Twitter message today …

“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!” 

The “Texas … case” to which Trump referred is the moronic lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that seeks to overturn the duly cast votes in four states in the presidential election.

It’s not clear to anyone how Trump plans to “intervene,” whether as an individual or as a spokesman for his failed re-election campaign.

I just want to add this: The nation already got the “victory” it needed when it elected Joe Biden as its next president.

legal news

‘Yes’ on lifetime appointments!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s shout out a cheer for the U.S. Supreme Court and the Constitution that allows its justices to receive lifetime appointments as part of the federal judicial branch of government.

The court has tossed out with little comment yet another frivolous lawsuit that sought to get the Pennsylvania legislature to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The suit, brought by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, wants to hand Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden, who won them in a free and fair election on Nov. 3.

What is so gratifying is that the high court ruled unanimously against the complaint brought by the Trumpkin Kelly. That means Trump’s three appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — ruled against The Donald.

Hey, this is a big deal. Why? Because Trump declared it essential to have a nine-member court seated to enable him to win a close call in any complaint brought to challenge the results of the election.

Well, it wasn’t a close call. The justices, all of them, saw fit to toss this latest complaint onto the scrap heap where it belongs.

Yes, the nation’s founders had the right idea when they established a judiciary that should be as free as possible from political pressure.

national news

Democracy can withstand this GOP assault

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am going to stand strong and foursquare in representative democracy’s corner as our system of government faces down this frontal assault by the Republican Party.

Donald Trump has lost a presidential election. He continues to challenge the free and fair results. He is losing court battle after court battle. Judges are scorning his legal team’s so-called logic. Yet he persists.

I submit that representative democracy is suffering some serious collateral damage in this political fire fight. The good news, though, is that I also believe our system of government will survive.

President-elect Joe Biden will take office in about six weeks. Donald Trump will be gone from the center of the U.S. political universe. President Biden will commence the task of “restoring our national soul.”

He will have to apply proverbial bandages to representative democracy as well. Donald Trump’s assault on our system of government is putting it to an unprecedented test. I remain faithful to the notion that our system that has been tried over many years by other virulent forces will be strong enough to withstand the damage that Donald Trump is inflicting on it.

The legendary journalist Carl Bernstein calls Trump’s refusal to accept Biden’s victory as more dangerous than President Nixon’s attempt to cover up the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. Bernstein calls Trump the most “subversive” individual ever elected to the presidency. He seeks to subvert our democratic principles to his ego, to his quest for authoritarian power and for his relentless challenge to the integrity of our voting system, which is the bedrock of our government.

No man, though, is capable of bringing down out representative democracy. It will survive this assault. Indeed, it could emerge even stronger than ever.

My eternal optimism will not allow me to consign our system to the scrap heap because a demented politician seeks to destroy it.

national news

Trump exit playing true to form

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I suppose you could say that Donald Trump’s tortured exit from the political stage is what many of us thought might occur.

No, I am not saying folks would have predicted each excruciating step by step. However, Trump’s non-political background never prepared him for the kind of defeat he would suffer on Election Day 2020 and he was ill-prepared to accept the fate that others had handed him.

He came of age and entered the business world on the back of a multimillion-dollar stake his rich father bequeathed him. He formed his own company. Trump called his own shots. He took no guff from those who worked for him. He sought no favor from those with whom he worked. Nor did Trump — by his own admission — seek forgiveness for any mistakes he made along the way.

His entire adult life was geared toward a single goal: self enrichment and aggrandizement. Trump’s ego would not allow him to think of others, nor to invest any of the wealth he acquired in the communities that gave it to him.

Then, after lying his way to fame and fortune, he decided to seek the first and only public office ever in his life: the presidency. Wouldn’t you know it? The reality TV celebrity won!

Now he’s been tossed out. The public for whom he worked and to whom he was responsible has given him the heave-ho. Hit the road, Donald, and don’t let the door hit you in your ample a** on the way out of the White House.

Donald Trump’s petulance has been mind-blowing. The dangerous game of denigration is frightening in the extreme as he rants and riffs on alleged corruption in an electoral system he took an oath to defend and protect has been astonishing in the extreme.

Does any of this, at its deepest level, surprise anyone? If it does, it certainly shouldn’t be a surprise.

He soon will be replaced by a man who has spent his adult life in public service. Joe Biden isn’t the perfect man to be elected president. However, the president-elect — given what we have endured for the past four years — is damn close to the ideal antidote to the selfishness, the narcissism, the corruption and the grifting we have seen from Donald Trump and those closest to him.

Dare I say, too: Some of us saw it — or something like it — coming a long time ago.

national news

Biden lead piles up

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Not that anyone is keeping score — other than me — but here’s a bit of election trivia for you to ponder.

President-elect Biden’s actual vote margin over Donald Trump has surpassed 7 million ballots, making this the most decisive election victory since 2008, when Barack Obama defeated the late John McCain by nearly 10 million votes.

I understand a couple of realities about this vote margin. One is that it doesn’t matter about who gets elected, since the Electoral College makes that call. Oh, wait! President-elect Biden has 306 electoral votes; he only needed 270 to win the presidency.

Four years ago, Trump rolled up the same number of electoral votes that Biden did and he called his win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 a “landslide.” This time he alleges Biden’s win is the result of a “rigged election.” What utter horsesh**!

Sigh! Trump went to Georgia tonight to keep making his contemptuous complaint about fraud and other other idiocy about how he “won” the Georgia vote.

Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (uselectionatlas.org)

The other reality is that of the 7 million vote majority that Trump rang up, more than 5 million ballots came from California. Still, let’s remember that this was a national election. Still, let’s be prepared to hear the claptrap from the Trumpster toadies that will seek to denigrate the scope of Joe Biden’s victory.

Trump lost the election … bigly.

State news

Hey, Lt. Gov. Patrick … have you awarded any dough?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, one of the charter members of the state’s Republican Party loony bin brigade, recently offered a reward for anyone who could produce evidence of vote fraud in Texas.

From what I have been able to gather, he hasn’t had to pay up.

Imagine that, eh? Why do you suppose Patrick has gone silent? I reckon it’s because no one has come forward with evidence of fraud. Not even a little bit of it, let alone “widespread voter fraud” of the type that Donald J. Trump keeps yapping about.

Texas registered a tremendous voter turnout in this year’s presidential election, with more than 11 million of us casting ballots. Trump carried the state by less than 6 percent. In Collin County, where I live — a county known for its rock-ribbed Republican standing — Trump won by just 4.4 percent.

The election was conducted with the usual professionalism that counties across the state perform.

Yet there was Lt. Gov. Patrick making a big show out of the most hideous non-story of this entire election cycle. He dangled money in front of Texans seeking to lure someone to come forward with evidence of vote fraud.

This is all part of the same sham and scam that Trump is unloading on the national democratic process. It’s the stuff of idiots, conspiracy theorists, dimwits, dipsh**s and certifiable loons.

Dan Patrick can rest easy now. He won’t have to pay anyone a nickel.

national news

Post-election period: mind-boggling!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It might be just me, but this period after the latest presidential election is about as mind-boggling as anything I ever have witnessed.

And, yes, that includes the period after the 2000 election that ended up being decided by a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that resulted in George W. Bush taking office as the 43rd president of the United States.

This is one takes the proverbial cake.

Donald Trump got thumped by Joe Biden. The president-elect has rolled up an impressive popular vote margin and a decent Electoral College majority to become the next president. As for Trump, well, he has managed to shower himself with embarrassment upon embarrassment with his petulant, boorish and childish refusal to recognize that he won’t be president after Jan. 20, when Joe Biden takes the oath to become President Biden.

Beyond that, he has endangered our very democracy by encouraging governors to overturn the results of the elections in their states … which they cannot do by law. Trump has denigrated the electoral process, asserting the existence of “massive” voter fraud where none exists. He has fought and lost 30-plus court battles. Meanwhile, states that Biden won are certifying the results, as are the states that Trump carried.

The way I see it, there is no way in the world that Donald Trump will attend President Biden’s inauguration. He will skulk off long before the new president takes his oath and begins the work of repairing the damage done  under Trump’s tenure as president.

I am left at this juncture to merely wish that the new president can finish his pre-oath-taking preparation — which should he should be able to do — and then get to work.

As for Donald John Trump … don’t let the door hit you in your backside, podnuh.