QAnon queen steps in it again

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Is it possible that Congress’s QAnon queen, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has finally crossed a line that her Republican protectors cannot cross with her?

Greene has compared the mask-wearing mandates issued by governments at all levels to the treatment that European Jews endured during the Holocaust.

Yes, she says the mask order compares to human history’s worst case of genocide! What the hell?

Leading congressional Republicans have condemned this nitwit’s latest bloviating rhetoric. House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, his deputy Steve Scalise and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell all have blasted Greene to smithereens. Congressional Democrats want her thrown out of office.

It’s not at all clear, of course, if Republicans will join their Democratic colleagues in ridding the People’s House of this idiot’s poison. I hope they do, however, I am not holding my breath.

Reform, not defund, police

(Photo by Pablo Monsalve / VIEWpress via Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The nation took some time today to remember the murder of a man at the hands of a rogue police officer.

George Floyd’s death one year ago on a Minneapolis street sparked a revolution across the land, with protesters calling for efforts to “defund the police.”

I do not accept that former cop Derek Chauvin’s hideous conduct that day in which he suffocated Floyd by pressing his knee on the back of the man’s neck for more than nine minutes should require communities to take money from police departments. Chauvin faces a lengthy prison term based on the jury’s guilty verdict on charges of murder and manslaughter.

Justice was delivered that day in the courtroom.

Does it mean we should take money away from police departments? No, it means to me that we need to reform police agencies. I continue to stand with the men and women who serve and protect us. However, I also see plenty of room for reforming the way they do their jobs.

Indeed, we have seen too damn many instances of cops responding with far too much aggression when the suspects are racial minorities. George Floyd’s death caused a justifiable uproar.

However, let us not get carried away with this “defund the police” movement. I want PDs reformed if there is cause within these departments that cry out for reform.

And, yes, I will continue to grieve over George Floyd’s death.

Mr. POTUS, stand firm

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has a meeting coming up soon with a guy who once had another president twisted around his pinky finger.

I do not expect the same kind of kowtowing from the current POTUS as it regards Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

The leaders will meet in their first summit encounter in Geneva.

My hope and my expectation is that Joe Biden will give Putin an earful about some of the issues that went unspoken between Putin and Donald J. Trump.

You know what they are: Russian interference in our elections; Russian human rights violations; and the bounties that Russians paid the Taliban terrorist/goons for Americans they killed in battle in Afghanistan.

Putin is a bad actor. He runs a rogue nation that presents itself as an economic and military power when it is a third-rate nation at almost every level imaginable.

Putin played Donald Trump like a fiddle. He doesn’t figure to do the same thing to President Biden.

Stand firm, Mr. President.

Memoir in the works

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The question comes with surprising frequency when I tell folks what I did for a living for nearly four decades.

It goes something like this: Are you going to write a book about it?

My answer is usually the same: Well … not exactly. However, I am renewing a commitment I made some years ago not long after my career in daily print journalism came to a sudden halt, which is that I am going to finish a memoir I intend to write for my sons and any other family members who are interested in reading it.

You see, my career enabled me as a reporter and editor for daily newspapers in Oregon and Texas to do many things not available to other human beings. It also allowed me to cross paths with people I admired and, yes, loathed from afar.

I was able to meet a future president of the United States, a former POTUS, someone who was running for the high office. I flew over an erupting volcano, I endured a landing and takeoff from a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. I stood in the presence of one of the 20th century’s most iconic political figure.

My wife has been nudging me to finish what I have started. Yes, I got started some time back on this memoir. I have let the effort lapse, much to my dismay.

Then we met recently with one of my oldest and dearest friends. He, too, likes to write and has paid marvelous tributes to his late wife. My friend encouraged me with affirmation that the highlights of my career are worth sharing with my sons.

It’s a project that needs finishing. My only “problem,” if you want to call it that, is that I am not sure I ever will be able to finish it, to tie a bow around it and present it. Why? I keep recalling individuals and occurrences that filled me with so much joy.

But … the work will commence.

Abortion headed for scrap heap?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am profoundly offended by the notion of politicians dictating to women how they can deal with emotional trauma that virtually no one else can comprehend.

Yet that is what is likely to happen if — or likely when — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs an anti-abortion bill into law.

The Legislature has enacted a bill that would make abortion illegal six weeks after conception, which is before many women even know they are pregnant.

Texas Senate advances bill to outlaw abortions if Roe. v. Wade overturned | The Texas Tribune

What’s more, these politicians — dominated in Texas by Republicans, of course — are poised to make all abortions illegal if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in this country.

As the Texas Tribune reported:

I am shaking my head in disgust and dismay at what these pols think they are doing.

As I have noted already on this blog, my distress at this draconian measure does not make me “pro-abortion.” I never could recommend an abortion for a woman who sought my counsel. I simply would stand back and tell that woman to do what her heart tells her to do.

If only our state’s smug political class — comprising a solid majority of men — would comprehend the notion that they are venturing into territory where they should never tread.

Bipartisan solution still MIA

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden had the congressional Republican caucus in his hands … then he lost them.

Or has he?

Biden has this massive infrastructure package on the table. He is seeking some Republican buy-in.

The president talks a good game. He wants his GOP pals to join him and his fellow Democrats to join in the effort to fix roads, bridges and ports while also protecting families.

I had high hopes he could persuade what’s left of the GOP moderate mini-caucus to sign on. Those hopes are fading with the likes of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine suggesting that Republicans aren’t likely to spend so much money.

President Biden has a lot of experience working across the aisle with Republicans. He contends he has many friends on the other side; they speak kindly of him, too. Those Republicans, though, face pressure of another kind. They do not want to offend the still-significant number of their constituents who remain wedded to the Big Lie promoted by Donald J. Trump … you know the one about the “theft” of the 2020 election by voters who cast illegal ballots. Well, they didn’t steal anything. The only theft I can see is the pilfering of politicians’ honor and integrity.

It is carrying over into President Biden’s desire to achieve something close to a bipartisan solution to this infrastructure package.

I won’t give up hope that the president can deploy his vast knowledge of the political system to benefit millions of Americans who desire to see government work for them.

Home is where I live

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Long ago I adopted the mantra that “home is where I live.”

That always prevented me from saying that I would be “going home” upon returning to Oregon, the state where I was born and came of age.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I feel a strange sense of being “home” while coming back to Oregon.

My wife and I embarked on a remarkable journey through life nearly 50 years ago. It took us eventually to Texas — with excursions along the way to virtually all 50 states and about 20 countries.

Going “home” to Oregon usually fills me with a sense of familiarity. I know Portland. I know the Willamette Valley, the Columbia River Gorge, the Cascade Range, the Pacific Ocean coastline.

I know these places because I frequented them many times before my career led me to Texas, where we reared our sons and brought them into manhood.

Our most recent return to the Pacific Northwest has filled me with an added pleasure. It has enabled me to hook up with young men of my youth. These are fellows who were awkward and gawky once in their lives … in our lives. They have grown up just as I managed to do.

We all have enjoyed success in professional and personal aspects of our lives. It hasn’t been a joy ride devoid of potholes along the way. It’s just life as we all know and expect it to be.

I still believe that “home is where I live.” Coming back to where I used to call “home” has given me a strange sense of belonging. It feels mighty good.

How does this guy run for POTUS?

(Photo by Bryan Thomas/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Hill had this to report today:  Cruz, who won reelection to the Senate in 2018, regularly spars with progressives and political enemies on Twitter and is widely expected to consider a run for president in 2024. 

“Cruz,” of course, is Ted Cruz, the junior Republican U.S. senator from Texas who has aspired to be president from the moment he took office in 2013. He tried in 2016 before losing the GOP primary to Donald Trump.

He wants to run again for president, or so many political observers apparently believe.

Ted Cruz knocks MSNBC’s Brian Williams over ‘Kremlin Cruz’ label | TheHill

I am wondering: How in the world does the Cruz Missile for the office if Donald Trump wants his old job back?

You see, Cruz morphed from a ferocious Trump critic when he ran against him in 2016 to one of his most sycophantic followers after Trump took office.

To this day Cruz does not dare repeat the things he said about Trump back then: sniveling coward, amoral man, narcissist, pathological liar. 

Here’s the deal: Cruz was right when he said those angry things about Trump.

What happens if Trump decides he can actually be nominated by the GOP in 2024? Cruz might have to put his presidential ambitions on hold until 2028. He dares not repeat the truth about the former Idiot in Chief.

‘Youthful indiscretion,’ anyone?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, to be sure.

He argued that he shouldn’t be held totally responsible for how he might have acted as an irresponsible teenager.

What, then, does one make of a decision he signed off on that keeps a man in prison for life after he killed a grandparent when he was just 15 years of age?

Brett Kavanaugh Remains As Incorrigible as Ever | The Nation

The Nation magazine, a left-leaning publication, calls Kavanaugh “as incorrigible as ever” and criticizes him for the decision he rendered regarding the young murderer.

I know one cannot possibly compare the act of someone who kills another human being with what Kavanaugh was accused of doing — sexual assault and assorted other related activities.

Still, The Nation’s Ellie Mystal does pose an interesting question about how one can ask for leniency for his own behavior but can dig in so deeply when a young man commits a crime and is being forced to spend his life behind bars for a “youthful indiscretion.”

What’s good for the proverbial goose … you know?

Flynn: pandemic a fraud

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Here is the latest from the nuthouse known as the Donald Trump administration.

The disgraced former national security adviser for Trump — Michael Flynn — alleges that the COVID-19 pandemic was made up to distract us from the 2020 election.

See? It wasn’t real. It was concocted out of whole cloth, says the lying ex-national security guru who was fired — or resigned — from his job just 24 days into the new administration in 2017.

This also is the idiot who led the 2016 GOP convention chant to “Lock her up!” when Hillary Clinton’s email SNAFU was still under serious discussion.

Now he’s done it. He has joined the conspiracy cabal about the pandemic, suggesting it was all “fake news.”

Hmm. I wonder how Michael Flynn accounts for the deaths of 580,000-plus Americans.