Tag Archives: POTUS

national news, political news

Sticking with Biden

Just so you know, I am standing firmly behind President Biden’s effort to win re-election to a second term in office.

Yes, I have read the polling data. I have heard the talking heads worrying their little noggins out over the polls that show the president trailing his Republican opponents. I have heard the concerns about his age.

I acknowledge fully the age issue is a serious one to be sure. He is about to turn 81. Life can go south in a hurry at that age. Believe me when I say that I have felt the crushing pain of watching a loved gone o from healthy to seriously unhealthy virtually overnight … and she was in her early 70s when we lost her.

However, I am not going to accept any arguments about mental acuity or loss of intellectual capacity in the president.

Joe Biden is fit for the job. I want him to stay at his post.

environmental news, Joe Biden, national news

Politics turns ugly in times of need

Don’t you just hate the gamesmanship that develops among politicians when disaster strikes communities, and even entire states? I do. It drives me batty.

For example …

President Biden traveled to Florida to examine he wreckage brought by Hurricane Idalia. Biden is running for re-election. One of the candidates wishing to succeed him is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of a thundering herd of Republicans seeking his party’s nomination.

Biden says the federal government “will take care of Florida.” He added that “I don’t know” what the governor’s plans are during his brief visit to the “hurricane state.”

This kind of crap seemingly occurs all the time. Politicians seeking high public office just don’t dare be seen on camera cozying up to other politicians against whom they might be running.

Do you recall the time in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy devastated New Jersey? Democratic President Barack Obama went to the Jersey Shore to see the damage. Republican Gov. Chris Christie greeted him and was photographed — get ready for it — with his arm around the president’s shoulder. 

The response from Republicans was astonishing, to say the least. How in the world could a GOP governor be so damn friendly to a Democratic president who was just doing his job as the nation’s consoler in chief? 

How about the time Republican President Bush embraced then-Democratic U.S. Senate leader Tom Daschle after delivering his speech to Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Or when he sought to console New York’s Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer by cupping Schumer’s face in his hands on the floor of Congress?

It’s common knowledge, of course, that we have only president at a time and that individual is on call 24/7 to respond to emergencies when they occur. One of the occurred this past week in Florida and Joe Biden is answering that call. Why does it matter one damn bit whether the governor of that state is running for the office that Joe Biden now occupies?

It shouldn’t matter!

crime news, legal news

A trial for the ages?

Let’s not pussyfoot around the obvious, which is that any of the four trials awaiting Donald J. Trump can be categorized as the “most significant legal proceeding in U.S. history.”

Every one of them will make history. They will become trials for the ages. They likely will be included in the first line of the obituary written for the individual who will stand trial.

Donald J. Trump is the first former president of the United States to be indicted for allegedly committing felony crimes against the government he swore an oath to defend and protect.

He is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. My sense, though, is that state and federal prosecutors have done their jobs well enough to secure convictions perhaps on all the charges leveled against Trump. How many of them are there? Ninety-one!

Did any of us ever imagine seeing a former POTUS stand trial for seeking to overturn an election and obstructing the peaceful transfer of power after he lost that election? I damn sure never imagined it.

The trials that have been set constitute the most meaningful court proceedings this country ever has witnessed. We cannot possibly overstate what they will mean to the future of our democratic republic.

national news

Must stay on top of ex-POTUS

If only I could rid myself of having to say another word about the machinations of the 45th president of the United States.

Except that I cannot. Not while he remains at or near the top of the Republican Party presidential nomination hunt in 2024.

If only he’d go the hell away. He won’t. He lusts for attention and, boy howdy, he’s getting it now as the twice-indicted (for now!), twice-impeached ex-POTUS.

I am confident in predicting that there appear to be at least two more indictments coming his way. Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis is sending up signals that an indictment is imminent. All the ex-POTUS did there was demand that the Georgia secretary of state “find” enough votes to give the loser the state’s Electoral College tally.

The other indictment also appears set to come from the feds — again! — as special counsel Jack Smith continues his work on the ex-POTUS’s role in inciting the 1/6 assault on the government as Congress was preparing to ratify the Electoral College victory rolled up by Joe Biden in 2020.

All of this, I am saddened to say, puts bloggers and assorted commentators such as yours truly in an awkward place. We have to keep commenting on these goings-on. To be sure, I am not going to weigh in — per an earlier pledge — on every single campaign utterance that flies out of the crook’s pie hole.

I won’t apologize for believing I must comment on the issues surrounding this horribly unfit, immoral and disgraceful politician. I simply must explain myself and recognize three facts that are beyond dispute.

First, he is a former president of the United States. Second, he is the first POTUS ever indicted by the very government he once led. Third, those two facts make it impossible for me to ignore what’s happening — or what is about to happen — to a guy who ought to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

‘Law and order’ party? A mirage!

Whatever happened to what we once called the “Law and Order Party”?

I think I have solved the mystery. The Law and Order Party never existed in the first place. It became a catchphrase coined in the 1960s for Republicans to get tough with (a) anti-Vietnam War hippies, (b) Blacks who were angry at the illegal and immoral indignities they were suffering and (c) anyone else who sided with them.

Many of us, me included, have been wringing our hands over the Law and Order Republicans who suddenly now want to “defund the FBI,” who accuse the Justice Department of “weaponizing” itself” and who — in the words of the dimwit GOP U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, believe we now are a “communist country” because a former POTUS has been indicted for criminal charges.

An actual Law and Order Republican would never stand still for the behavior that the ex-POTUS has done during his time in office and the period after he lost re-election.

I have concluded that the term “Law and Order Republican” is a fabrication. It meant nothing when they coined it in the late 1960s and it means even less than that now that the nation’s leading Republican pol is under indictment for crimes he allegedly committed after he got drummed out of the White House in 2020.

The former POTUS’s GOP pals are making a mockery of law and order — and the insistence at DOJ that every American is subject to the same standards and the same laws.

It is yet another slimy, stinking and sickening example of the hypocrisy that has infected a once-great political party.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

We are entitled to tune ‘that man’ out?

Anderson Cooper said the following, in part, the other day after the immediate past POTUS appeared on his network to spread more lies and defame more people:

“You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again,” Cooper said. “But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away? If we all only listen to those we agree with, it may actually do the opposite. If lies are allowed to go unchecked as imperfect as our ability to check them is on a stage in real time, those lies continue, and those lies spread. If you’re angry or upset, I understand, but you have the power to do something about it. You can actually get involved. You can make a difference, whatever side of the aisle you’re on. After last night, none of us can say I didn’t know what’s out there. I didn’t know what’s coming. We asked Republican Senators for their thoughts about last night. Some preferred not to say anything. Others did.”

You can read Cooper’s full monologue here:

CNN’s Anderson Cooper: You Have Every Right Never To Watch This Network Again After Trump Town Hall | Video | RealClearPolitics

Full disclosure: I didn’t watch him speak. I made a conscious decision to tune him out, to ignore the falsehood-filled rants he reportedly offered on CNN’s supposed “town hall” event.

My fellow Americans, we should prepare ourselves for much more of the same if this moron’s 2024 presidential candidacy gets that far.

I will cling to my hope that the state and federal indictments to come will pile up, burying this one-time reality TV celebrity/real estate mogul/serial philanderer/all-round evil presence under a mound of legal crises.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

POTUS is as sharp as ever

I am going to offer a very brief warning to those who read this blog and who insist on hurling epithets at President Biden, alleging that he’s too old to run for a second term and that he’s lost his mental acuity.

Your blogger, that’s me, won’t accept that criticism or allow it on this blog. That’s right! I am going to keep my eyes peeled for those who insist that Joe Biden has lost his snap.

He has lost nothing. The president remains sharp and focused on the job of protecting us against enemies foreign and domestic. He is faithful to the oath he took when he became president.

Therefore, I simply am not going to allow that kind of defamatory criticism see light on this platform.

Are we clear? Good!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

This is what POTUSes do!

Joe Biden wasted no time doing what presidents of the United States are supposed to do when disaster strikes the nation.

He issued a disaster declaration for Mississippi, which has been ravaged by tornadoes that killed more than 20 residents in that state and in neighboring Alabama. The federal government now has been ordered to expedite federal assistance to those who have lost property and loved ones.

Why is this worth mentioning? Let’s see. His immediate predecessor apparently based his decisions on matters such as this on whether the affected stated cast most of their votes for him in the previous presidential election.

Do you recall how POTUS 45 scolded California for its “forest management practices” while hedging on whether to issue a disaster declaration in the wake of the fires that ravaged thousands of acres of timberland? I don’t even remember whether he issued that declaration, but the point is that he made a big deal out of an issue because California didn’t support him in his first bid for office in 2016.

President Biden is not going to play that stupid game. Mississippi didn’t vote for him, either, but he stepped up and did what presidents are supposed to do: help all Americans in need.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

‘Retribution’ POTUS? Eek!

Well, I thought I could ride out a third campaign for the White House by the guy who used to live there without commenting on it.

But … I cannot let this notion go.

The 45th president said this to a small gathering at the Conservative Action Political Conference: “I am your warrior, I am your justice, I am your retribution.”

Your retribution?

Well, that’s what the world can expect to hear from the disgraced, twice-impeached former POTUS as he seeks to slither his way back to power.

Retribution? Against what and/or whom? I am going to presume he means the myriad investigators who are examining whether to indict the ex-POTUS on a number of felony crimes. The Fulton County, Ga., district attorney is looking into allegations that the former president sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. The Manhattan, N.Y., DA is looking into that hush money payment to the porn star to keep her quiet about a relationship that the ex-president said didn’t occur.

Then we have the special counsel hired by the attorney general who is trying to determine whether to indict the ex-POTUS for inciting the 1/6 insurrection and whether he broke the law when he spirited classified documents from the White House.

Is this what could await us if hell freezes over and this idiot returns to the White House?

It won’t happen. Of that I remain confident.

This moron’s blathering at CPAC, before a handful of fellow extremists, is worth a note only because — after all — he once sat in the Oval Office and once made decisions on behalf of this nation.

Remember when he told the Republican National Convention in 2016 that “I, alone, can fix” what is wrong with the country?

This individual remains as delusional as ever!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Jimmy Carter: a wonderful life

Tributes have been pouring in to President Jimmy Carter’s home in Plains, Ga., after the announcement that he is entering hospice care.

I am fully aware of what that likely means, but I want to offer this brief tribute to a man who’s led perhaps the most extraordinary life imaginable. Furthermore, I will not presume he is headed for the Great Beyond … at least not just yet.

He has beaten cancer already. You’ll recall when he seemed to offer a heartfelt goodbye to this world when he announced he had the killer disease. Then he beat it into remission. That was in 2015.

Jimmy Carter did not, contrary to what many have said about him since his landslide loss in 1980, serve a “failed presidency.” It was nothing of the sort. He forged a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt; he negotiated the transfer of the Panama Canal to the country it splits in two; and, yes, he got our hostages out of Iran safely, albeit on the day Ronald Reagan took the presidential oath of office in 1981.

Carter didn’t sulk after losing to Reagan.

Instead, this man of deep and abiding Christian faith formed the Carter Center in 1982, dedicating its work to the pursuit of world peace; that work earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

And then, of course, he became involved with Habitat for Humanity, building homes for needy people around the world.

He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, served as a submariner, entered politics in Georgia and then, in 1976, announced, “My name is Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president.” He defeated President Gerald Ford that year and even after a bitter battle, the two men became the best of friends.

Jimmy Carter is a great man who has lived an astonishingly full life. More importantly, so many around him — and far beyond — have been enriched by the fullness of this man’s time on Earth.

Yes, we can speculate on what the future might hold for the nation’s 39th president. I won’t dwell at this moment on what may lie ahead. I just want to honor this good man’s character and thank him for serving his country — and the world — with honor and dignity.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com