medical news

Don’t apologize, doc

The ol’ “hot mic” caught another public official speaking the truth about a political adversary.

The “victim” this time was Dr. Anthony Fauci, who muttered “what a moron” after being berated by U.S. Sen. Roger Franklin, a Kansas Republican, about Fauci’s personal financial disclosure. The exchange took place Tuesday during a Senate committee hearing.

My request to the doc is this: Don’t apologize!

Franklin was berating Dr. Fauci over financial disclosures that Fauci said are a matter of public record. All anyone has to do is look them up on the Internet. Franklin wasn’t buying it. He didn’t know what he was talking about, Fauci said.

So, then he muttered the “moron” crack.

Hey, he was speaking the proverbial truth to power in that instance.

To my way of thinking, Fauci should say out loud and on the record that other GOP critics of his are “morons” for spreading lies and exposing the doctor’s family to threats of physical harm.

Are you listening, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Temp gig has ended

2 Comments

Given that I made a fairly big deal out of a temporary job assignment that came to me a few weeks ago, I feel compelled to tell you that the assignment has concluded.

The Dallas Morning News needed a temporary editorial writer to join the staff. The editor of the opinion pages got in touch with me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He told me up front it was a temporary gig. Hey, no sweat, I told him. I am 72 years old and had a nice career as an opinion writer and editor. I said I was game for the assignment.

It ended the other day.

I have to say it was an honor and a thrill to lend a hand for a brief period of time to the staff of a major daily newspaper. I wish them well as they continue on. As for my wife and me, our trek will take us forward, too.

What’s more, if the need ever arises for me to submit a resume to someone, I can add “editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News” to the list of stops along my journey.

Not bad.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

Paul ‘kindles the crazies’

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci have become enemies. Whether their status reaches “mortal enemy” status remains to be determined, but something tells me they aren’t far from reaching that perilous state in their hostile relationship.

Fauci appeared today before a Senate committee that includes the Republican Paul as one of its members. He accused Fauci of lying about whether the COVID-19 virus had its origins in a lab in China. Fauci fought back.

According to NBC News: “What happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue, is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there, and I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family, and my children, with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me,” said Fauci during the Senate hearing.

Fauci says Sen. Paul ‘s attacks ‘kindle the crazies’ who have threatened his life (msn.com)

And so it goes. Paul, who also is a physician when he isn’t stirring up the GOP nut jobs out there, will continue to harangue the good doctor for as long as he is able.

To be candid, I will stand with Fauci. My goodness, he is the nation’s pre-eminent infectious disease expert. He knows a lot more about this stuff than virtually anyone else, and that includes Sen. Rand Paul. So, for Paul to question the credibility of a man who took an oath years ago to “first, do no harm” is laughable on its face.

To put a fine point on it, Rand Paul just pi**es me off.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Governor’s race presents conundrum

The upcoming Republican Party primary race for Texas governor presents a serious conundrum for GOP voters.

They will get to choose from among three top-tier candidates, two of whom are nut jobs.

We have the governor, Greg Abbott; challenging him are former Texas GOP chairman Allen West and former state senator Don Huffines. I won’t vote in the GOP primary this March, but I do have a thought or two I want to share.

Abbott is being challenged on the right by West and Huffines. Those two clowns don’t believe Abbott is conservative enough. West is the former one-term Florida congressman who moved to Texas because his political career in Florida was shot; Huffines is another far right-winger who says we need to ban all immigration into Texas.

Then we have Abbott, the guy who is fighting with the Biden administration over mask mandates.

I believe Abbott will survive this primary challenge, chiefly because West and Huffines are going to carve up the nut-job vote, paving the way for Abbott to skate to the party nomination.

It reminds me of the Texas Senate District 31 race in 2018 that enabled Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo to win his party’s nomination in a three-man race. His foes that year were former Midland mayor Mike Canon and Amarillo businessman Victor Leal. Both men sought to outflank Seliger on the far right. Seliger ran as a true-blue,  mainstream Texas conservative and won the primary fight with 50.4 percent of the vote; no runoff was needed.

Canon and Leal split the goofball vote in that year’s Senate GOP primary.

I see the same thing happening this year in the GOP primary for governor.

Texas politics is really weird, indeed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, national news

Jim Jordan: GOP weasel

Jim Jordan is seeking to weasel his way out of a declaration he bellowed back when he was involved in a wild goose chase called “Benghazi.”

The Ohio Republican congressman said while serving on a House panel looking into the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that no one should avoid testifying before Congress. He said the panel on which he was serving deserved to hear the whole truth about the attack on the consulate and, by golly, Congress is empowered to seek the truth from anyone it sought.

Hah! Well, now comes the House select panel looking into the events of 1/6. It wants to talk to Jim Jordan about a conversation Jordan said he had with Donald Trump on that terrible day.

Jordan’s response? He is refusing to cooperate with the committee.

Jordan’s duplicity isn’t a surprise to those of us who have been watching this 1/6 probe unfold. The committee already has issued taken a bead on Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who stiffed the panel; it is looking at whether to go after former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who’s done the same thing.

Now we have Jim Jordan. C’mon, committee members. Don’t let this blowhard get away with this line of hypocrisy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

Cruz needs to grow a spine

(Photo by Bryan Thomas/Getty Images)

A most interesting thread has appeared in many of the critical comments about Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

It’s that he doesn’t have a spine. He is gutless. A coward, even.

He most recently blurted out a fundamental truth, which was that the 1/6 insurrection was the act of domestic terrorists. Then the GOP base loyal to Donald Trump — the insurrectionist who incited the riot — got all fired up; it blamed Cruz for abandoning the MAGA mantra, whatever the hell it is.

Cruz then ventured onto the Fox News program hosted by Tucker Carlson to walk it back. Cruz said he misspoke. Carlson wasn’t buying it. Cruz stumbled over his clumsy feet. He looked and sounded predictably pitiful.

The other time that rivaled Cruz’s latest exhibition of spinelessness was when he jetted off to Cancun while Texans were freezing to death in February. He came back when the crap hit the fan and then he sought to blame his decision to flee the state on his daughter, who wanted to get away with Mom and Dad. Ridiculous!

The guy is one of two men who represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. It’s no surprise to regular readers of High Plains Blogger that I detest him. He serves his own interests over all else. He doesn’t give a sh** about me, my family or my friends.

He wants to be president. My question is this: Do we really want someone without an ounce of integrity or courage to represent us on the world stage? Hell no!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

Doing one’s job cause for cheer?

All I can do these days is sigh over the knowledge that two Republican members of Congress who are doing the job to which they swore an oath have become heroes among those of us watching from a distance.

Yes, that would be Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. They are serving on the House committee examining the 1/6 riot that sought to block the certification of the 2020 Electoral College count.

Let’s ponder this for a moment.

I have saluted Cheney and Kinzinger for standing up to the threats, bullying and coercion coming from the Trump Cult wing of their party. They are seeking the truth behind the insurrection and have been highly critical of the ex-POTUS.

Is that reason to cheer them? In a better world it wouldn’t matter. They are just doing their job, which is to protect the Constitution. They took an oath to do that. So did all members of Congress. So do presidents of the United States.

It’s a sad time when we can find reasons to applaud and cheer members who are doing what they are charged to do.

Kinzinger is a lame duck; he isn’t seeking re-election this year. Cheney is facing a GOP primary challenge in Wyoming. I want her to win, not because I like her politics, but because she is one of so damn few Republicans who favors the oath she took to do her duty over any blind fealty to a cult leader.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Finally, the truth from a GOP senator

Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds of North Dakota received a direct question Sunday on whether the 2020 presidential election was “rigged,” or whether it was “stolen” from Donald J. Trump.

Here is what Rounds said:

“We looked — as a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states.

“While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state.

“The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And moving forward — and that’s the way we want to look at this — moving forward, we have to refocus once again on what it’s going to take to win the presidency.

“And if we simply look back and tell our people don’t vote because there’s cheating going on, then we’re going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage. So, moving forward, let’s focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that. But we have to let people know that they can — they can believe, and they can have confidence that those elections are fair.”

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds just admitted the 2020 election wasn’t rigged (msn.com)

Well … there you go. A Republican member of the U.S. Senate has told the truth about what most of us have known all along. It is that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020.

Now, may we just kill The Big Lie deader than dead?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, media news

What will happen to this site?

3 Comments

I lived in Amarillo, Texas, for 23 years and worked each day for nearly 18 of those years at the Globe-News, a once-good newspaper.

My daily journalism career came to an end in August 2012. The newspaper remains, but at this point it is a newspaper in name only. Yes, the paper still publishes seven days a week. It no longer publishes at the building where it operated for many decades. The printing press is in Lubbock and I don’t know how they handle business affairs, or circulation matters.

The newsroom? A formerly vibrant working environment has been all but eliminated; they’re down to maybe two or three reporters and some stringers (I guess).

The building is vacant. It is in a state of architectural decomposition. The corporate moguls vacated the building and moved what is left of the staff to an office in a downtown bank tower.

The once-proud structure is “tagged” with graffiti. They put out a fire inside the structure a few weeks ago.

The company that used to own the newspaper is still trying to sell the building, from what I hear. I do not know the state of that effort, such as whether it is being marketed aggressively. I don’t get back often to Amarillo, but my hunch is that it is just going to rot some more.

I want to lament the demise of that structure one more time.

The Globe-News used to aspire to becoming a great newspaper. It didn’t quite get there. We did a good job of reporting the news during my time there. I tried to lend some leadership via the opinion pages during my tenure as editor of those pages.

That was then. The here and now suggests to me that the newspaper itself is fading into the community’s past. It saddens me greatly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Demagogues sicken me

Our nation’s founders were wise men in that they felt it necessary to protect all forms of political speech, no matter how repulsive it might be to many of our ears.

But … damn! At times I wish we could outlaw demagoguery. I know we cannot. We dare not tinker with the First Amendment’s free speech clause, which I happen to value beyond all measure.

When I hear things, though, from those who claim to be speaking the “truth,” I cringe. Then I grit my teeth. I also might mutter a bad word or three.

I had an exchange recently with a critic of this blog. He continues to perpetuate the notion that political progressives endorse the notion of rioters committing acts of vandalism, not to mention inflicting bodily harm on police officers or those with whom they have disagreements.

I have sought to dispel that notion. Yes, I have heard some congressional progressive, speaking in the wake of police shootings of African Americans and the like, urge protesters to “take to the streets.” Is that an endorsement of violence, of vandalism, of committing felony crimes against human beings? No. It isn’t!

And yes, there are those on the left who resort to demagoguery at times. The current crop of demagogues features those on the right. They say that President Biden favors “open borders”; they contend that the president wants to “take your guns away”; they accuse liberals of “favoring” abortion in all cases.

This is the crap that sends me into orbit.

Do we ban those who promote such idiocy? No, we cannot do that. That Constitution of ours, drafted by those smart guys in the late 18th century, tells us we all have the right to utter nonsensical rhetoric. I accept that.

I just cannot accept what some Americans say while under constitutional protection.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience