Twitter acts correctly in banning fear-mongering liar

Marjorie Taylor Greene can yap and yammer until she runs out of breath.

Twitter acted correctly when it banned her personal access to the social medium permanently. The company’s reason? Greene, a Republican congresswoman serving her first term from Georgia, is peddling lies and dangerous misinformation about the COVID-19 virus that is still killing Americans.

Yes, it is going to prompt a debate about whether Twitter is violating Greene’s First Amendment right to free speech. It isn’t. You see, it has long been established that the constitutional guarantee does not allow anyone to yell “fire!” in a crowded theater, which is the equivalent of what Greene has been doing by pushing out the lies regarding the COVID virus and the vaccines developed to rid us of the virus’s effects.

Remember that Greene was elected in 2020 to the U.S. House of Representatives and promptly equated mask and vaccine mandates to what Jews endured during the Holocaust. House Republican leaders had the good sense — finally! — to strip her of committee assignments.

She continues to bloviate, though. Twitter, a private company, said it has heard enough from the QAnon queen of the House.

I agree with what the social media firm has done.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

She was the face of an institution

I want to share a brief word of sorrow over some news I just received from the Texas Panhandle.

Jeane Bartlett, who founded the human resources department at the Amarillo Globe-News (where I worked for nearly 18 years), has just died. Her niece told me via social media.

I am heartbroken.

Jeane spent 55 years working for the newspaper. She retired in 2001 after working with several publishers and two owners.

The first owner was a local family, the Whittenbergs, who then sold the paper to Morris Communications in the early 1970s. The new owners then sought to create an HR department and tasked Bartlett with setting it up. She completed the task and ran a department with equal amounts of efficiency and compassion.

Jeane was one of two Bartletts to work at the Globe-News. Her late husband, Harry, served as production director; his tour at the GN totaled 38 years. So, between them they compiled 93 years of experience at the newspaper of record for the Texas Panhandle.

Jeane Bartlett ran the newspaper’s involvement with the Scripps Howard Spelling Bee, highlighting the accomplishments of local youngsters. She put together holiday parties and became the go-to person on an entire array of community-related events.

Jeane was a tiger but was a sweet one. I relied on her wise counsel to resolve a personnel issue that needed fixing when I was employed there.

I am saddened by all measure to hear the news that she has left this good Earth. I just wanted to share these thoughts with you. I’ll collect my thoughts and wits later.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Virus is here forever?

Admission time: It is beginning to look as though we’re going to have the coronavirus around for as long as most of us are alive.

That’s what I keep hearing as I listen to the news and read various publications. It makes me wonder: Will the virus continue to disrupt our lives?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s senior medical adviser, today was dishing out a bit of good news. He said that the virus will morph perhaps by the end of the year from a “pandemic” to an “endemic” disease, meaning that it will still be around but will be manageable enough for us to avoid major life disruptions.

Well … I can live with that.

The “new normal” appears now to include a lifetime with this virus lurking in the background. At least that’s what I glean from it at the time being.

As I have noted already, the idea of wearing masks is seeming to be more “normal” than not wearing one. I’ve been able to travel a good bit over the years and have noticed masks are the “uniform of the day” for most folks in places with poor quality. Residents of Asian cities such as Bangkok, Taipei, Delhi, Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, Mumbai wear masks routinely as they go about their day. Now they have a virus to keep them masked up.

So, it might be for most of the rest of the world.

I’m OK with it, too — as long as it keeps my loved ones and me safe from the virus.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Liz Cheney gives him hell

Donald Trump deserves every single hit he should be receiving from his fellow Republicans. The only issue, though, is that so damn few of them are willing to say the things that came from U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney this morning.

What in the world is happening to me in this crazy political world? I am in a state of unadulterated admiration for a conservative Republican member of Congress who is speaking the unvarnished truth about a twice-impeached carnival barker who once masqueraded as a single-term president of the United States.

Cheney, one of two GOP members of the U.S. House committee examining the events of 1/6, said this among other things this morning: “He crossed lines no American president has ever crossed before,” she said in an interview with “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “When a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the coordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted.”

She also said that said Trump is “clearly unfit for future office [and] clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.”

The mob attacked Capitol Hill at Trump’s urging. Trump then said silently by, watching the mayhem overwhelm the Capitol building without ever telling the rioters to stand down, to go home, to cease the violence.

Holy crap, congresswoman!

As Trump weighs 2024 bid, top Republican calls him ‘clearly unfit for future office’ (msn.com)

She knows she is right. I know she is right. The crisis facing the Republican Party, though, is that most of its members believe Cheney is a loon and that Trump is a hero to some movement followers who adhere to that Deep State/QAnon/Big Lie horsepucky that keeps flowing from Trump’s overfed pie hole.

Cheney also said today that all 535 members of Congress — House members and senators — take the same oath of office, which is to “protect the Constitution” and follow the law. That oath, she said, makes no provision for following the dictates of a single individual.

If only others within her party would listen to the wisdom Liz Cheney delivers.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Prepare for shellacking

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Dear Mr. President … it’s been a while since I’ve addressed you in a blog post, but here comes a warning for you.

Prepare for an electoral “shellacking,” to borrow a phrase, in the midterm election later this year. President Obama called a similar event in the 2010 midterm that cost y’all control of Congress; Republicans seized control of the legislative chamber. But I don’t need to remind you of that.

Nor do I need to remind you what happened in 2012, when you and the president got re-elected.

The shellacking you can expect to take this year doesn’t portend political doom for the administration you lead. Yes, I am aware your polling doesn’t reflect lots of good cheer for you.

Bear in mind, though, that the liars on the other side of the great divide continue to keep outshouting the truth-tellers.

The economy is recovering at a brisk pace; I feel it and sense it. We have been hit once again by another variant spawned by the coronavirus pandemic, but my gut tells me we’re going to end 2022 in much better health than we are entering it. We have some challenges around the world with which you must deal, but I will continue to have faith in your own legislative leadership experience that I believe will guide you as you confront them.

Much depends, surely, on whom Republicans nominate for the presidential run in 2024. I am sure you heard what Sen. Lindsey Graham — the guy who once described you as one of the “most decent men God ever created” — said about Donald Trump. He said the next election is “Trump’s to lose.” I am maintaining my faith in Americans’ good sense that we won’t go down that path again.

Then again, I also am going to cling to my skepticism that Trump actually runs again.

So, I wish you well in this new year, Mr. President. I stand with you.

I just want you to prepare early for the remarks you will have to give when they count the votes for the midterm election. A “shellacking” appears to be coming your way. Don’t feel you’re the only POTUS to suffer such an indignity. Others have been dealt serious defeats during their first term in office.

Don’t surrender. There well could be a revival at hand, too.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Nervous about the chill

This past winter’s big freeze and the misery it created has inflicted me with the nervous jerks as we prepare for this winter’s first big chill.

The temperature in North Texas is going to dip tonight into the low 20s, with wind chills registering in the low to mid-teens. There once was a time when I didn’t worry too much about whether the electricity and the water would hold up.

The disaster brought by the February 2021 freeze has disabused me of the complacency. We’re taking extra steps tonight to ensure we don’t lose water if the power goes out.

We likely should have been prepared better this past winter. We weren’t, I am ashamed to acknowledge. This year it’s different.

We also have that issue dealing with whether our electrical grid will hold up if Mother Nature returns another killer blast this winter. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the managers of our electrical grid, assure us — along with Gov. Greg Abbott — that our grid will hold up. ERCOT says we won’t suffer the misery we endured nearly a year ago.

ERCOT and Abbott had better be right on this one.

We aren’t going to place all our faith in their promises, though. We’ll hunker down and be ready for the worst if it comes.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Citizens need comfort in times of trouble

(AP Photo/Noah Berger)

It occurs to me that one of the things we aren’t hearing from the White House in response to wildfires that are destroying people’s homes and dashing their dreams are lectures from the president about “better management” of the land.

Recall how Donald Trump once scolded Californians over the forest management as fires were decimating communities in the Sierra Nevada region. We aren’t hearing such a thing these days as Colorado battles fires and, yes, California faces the potential for more fires.

President Joe Biden isn’t wired to chastise political leaders of states that didn’t grant him their electoral votes in the previous election. Indeed, he ventured to Kentucky — a decidedly red state — after tornadoes tore through several towns; he hugged people’s necks and prayed with them.

You won’t hear this president follow the path blazed by his immediate predecessor. We should never hear that kind of churlishness from our head of state as people suffer such misery and heartache.

Let me be clear about something. There is an element of human management that needs to be examined. As Politico reports: California’s wildfire problems are fueled by decades of fire suppression, climate change and a persistent desire to escape city life. The state has seen some 40,000 structures destroyed since 2017 and the largest conflagrations in state history.

The fire suppression accounted for the immense destruction at Yellowstone National Park in the late 1980s. Yet one did not hear President Reagan chastise parks officials for “forest management” policies in1988.

My point is that when Americans are hurting, we need comfort and empathy from the president. We do not need to hear our national leader lecture state and local officials while their constituents are crying out for help.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Few discrepancies found

Well, what do you know about this? The first reports of the “forensic audit” that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched — at the behest of Donald J. Trump — of balloting in four Texas counties shows minuscule discrepancies.

That means the voting was not rife with “widespread” fraud that Trump has alleged without offering a shred of evidence.

Trump came to Texas this past summer and got Abbott to call for an audit of four of the state’s most populous counties: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin. I live in Collin County. Of the counties audited, Collin voted for Trump narrowly, while the rest of them all voted for President Biden.

The Texas Tribune reported: The first phase of the review, released New Year’s Eve, highlighted election data from four counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin — that showed few discrepancies between electronic and hand counts of ballots in a sample of voting precincts. Those partial manual counts made up a significant portion of the results produced by the secretary of state, which largely focused on routine voter roll maintenance and post-election processes that were already in place before the state launched what it has labeled as a “full forensic audit.”

Texas secretary of state’s partial audit of 2020 election finds few issues | The Texas Tribune

Hmm. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that the audit of these counties won’t find anything worth mentioning. The audit that Abbott seeks was done because Trump continues to perpetuate The Big Lie about the results of the 2020 election. Trump lost! Biden won! The election was fair and legal and clean. Texas went for Trump, giving the then-POTUS its 38 electoral votes.

However, Trump wants to continue fostering doubt into the most secure election in U.S. history.

I will say once again that Donald Trump’s Big Lie only defames the hard work done at the local level by elections officials who take an oath to ensure that our elections are secure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Fireworks ban? Where? Not here … apparently

I awoke this morning believing I would suffer from sleep deprivation. To my pleasant surprise, it wasn’t so. Why the fear of being a zombie on this first day of the new year?

Because last night in our Princeton, Texas, neighborhood my bride and I — along with Toby the Puppy — were treated to a serenade of rockets bursting in air.

Which begs the question: I could swear I read somewhere that fireworks are forbidden inside the Princeton city limits, not to mention in our neighborhood, which is managed by a homeowners’ association. I mean, if the city ain’t gonna bust ya for blasting ’em, the HOA surely would do so. Right?

Not even close.

We turned in early last night, not wanting to watch the foolishness at Times Square in NYC. I had hoped for a good night’s sleep. Didn’t happen.

Our neighbors decided to blast away. Our puppy has quite a fear of loud noises, which means he hates the sound of fireworks. I don’t share that fear, but I do like to sleep when it’s time to turn in.

Well … that was then. The good news is that I did wake up this morning. The alternative was, shall we say, not acceptable.

To my neighbors out there who are disposed to blasting those damn fireworks, I just ask them to respect the wishes of those who live nearby who don’t care to join you in the revelry.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Dear Gov. Abbott: Get real, will ya?

You had me then you lost me, Gov. Greg Abbott.

Perhaps you might not remember when we had a nice professional relationship. You served on the Texas Supreme Court and then later as state attorney general. You would come see us in Amarillo when I worked at the newspaper as its editorial page editor.

I considered you to be a decent fellow. Thoughtful, not terribly partisan, reasonable.

Then you got elected governor in 2014. I was gone from the business when that happened, but I have been watching you closely ever since. Frankly, Gov. Abbott, you have disappointed me.

You keep hammering the federal government over Affordable Care Mandates, or border security issues, over COVID-19 protection measures. You just cannot stop blasting the feds over this and that.

I get that you might want to seek the presidency in 2024. You’re entitled to harbor your ambition. But what the hell? Now you want the feds to send more testing kits to Texas and more antibody material. You keep yammering that President Biden isn’t sending enough of them here. Hey, does it occur to you that Texas is one of 50 states and several territories that also require federal assistance during this pandemic?

I was hoping you might take your even-handed approach to government into the governor’s office when you got elected. Silly me. I was a fool for thinking that would happen.

What is so remarkable about your insistence on federal help now is how you have stiffed the feds — and the president — previously.  You didn’t even have the decency to show up for a photo op with Biden when he came to Texas. He’s the president of everyone and good manners would dictate that you could at least grace him with a handshake for the cameras. But you’re all over the former Liar in Chief when he visited the Texas. What a joke!

Well, enough of this note to you, Gov. Abbott. I just had to get this off my chest. I feel better now.

Happy new year … and stop trying to make political points by your constant bitching about Joe Biden.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience