Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Now … for my favorite

Those who read this blog regularly know that I have spent countless hours blasting politicians and assorted other public figures for reasons that run far and wide across the field of thought.

At this moment, I intend to take a look at another type of pol and public figure: the individuals who do good for us and those who fit the mold that comports with my own bias.

The most loathsome politician walking among us — hands down! — continues to be Donald J. Trump. I won’t waste my time — or your time, for that matter — rehashing what I already have put on the record about The Donald.

Who’s my favorite politician? I need to give that some serious thought.

What do I want in a politician? I want that person who is able to work with pols of both major parties. I want him or her to be able to compromise without surrendering his or her principles. I want my favorite pol to be aware of his or her place in history at all times. I want that politician to be able to make brave decisions in tough times.

I guess you could surmise I am talking about President Biden. Hmm. I might be.

I consider myself to be a “good government progressive.” I am not wedded to strict ideology. Being a 70-plus-year-old red-blooded American patriot, my strict ideology days are long behind me. I used to admire ideologues when I was in my 20s and 30s. Then I learned about all those shades of gray that color our arguments.

Let me ponder something for just a moment. My favorite politician or public figure?

I’ll take the plunge and declare it to be Joseph R. Biden Jr.

I want him to succeed. Given the goals he has declared for the nation, we all will benefit from his success.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news, national news

Looking for evil intent?

The right-wing goon squad that is on the hunt for evil intent involving President Biden and his son, Hunter, are going to stop at nothing to concoct some nefarious plot that — as I look at it — defies logic.

Hunter Biden went to work years ago for a Ukrainian energy company, serving on the board and raking in a lot of dough for doing, allegedly, nothing to earn it. I get that it doesn’t look good for someone to trade on his famous parent’s name for considerable profit. Hey, it happens; e.g.: Donald Jr. and Eric Trump.

What about dear ol’ Dad, though? Are we supposed to believe that a man who has spent virtually his entire adult professional life in public service is going to throw it all away with an obviously careless and corrupt practice? The right-wingers want us to believe that President Biden himself profited from Hunter’s association with the energy firm.

Yes, that the president of the United States of America hauled in cash and fattened his own bank account. How does someone with half a brain even think he can get away with such a thing when the public is watching his every move?

Joe Biden served for eight years as vice president in the Barack Obama administration. Prior to being elected VP, he served for 36 years as a U.S. senator from Delaware. Prior to that, Biden served on a county council as a Democratic representative.

I did the math: That’s 52 years of public service. 

And yet the right-wingers want us to believe that a man who’s been under the public’s prying eyes would be stupid enough to take money while his son is working as a board member for a foreign-based energy firm.

One more point. During the first impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s quest for a political favor from Ukraine, a prosecutor in that country declared categorically that neither Joe nor Hunter Biden committed any crimes.

Still, the hunt goes on. To what end? To seek to destroy the career of the man who defeated Donald Trump.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Blowhards just piss me off

Congress is filling itself with too damn many right-wing blowhards, individuals who — at the moment they take their oaths of office — start spouting nonsense without giving a second thought to the consequence of their fiery rhetoric.

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida is the latest right-winger to blather garbage about the president of the United States who, I hasten to add, answers to a much greater constituency that any of the 100 men and women who serve in the Senate.

Scott said President Biden should resign. That he doesn’t have the snap to do the job. He joins other right-wing nut cases — such as Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas — to offer a medical diagnosis of the president without any actual personal contact with him.

Scott joined the Senate in 2019 after he defeated longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. He pushed himself immediately in front of TV cameras. Scott is now some sort of spokesman for the MAGA caucus within the Senate.

He’s another dipsh**! Pure and simple.

Just so you need to be reminded, I have spoken negatively about left-leaning political wannabe superstars, too. I have scolded them for blathering too frequently without first paying their dues. So, spare me the “what about the Democrats” canard.

I just am sick and tired of the yammering from the far-right wing of a once great political party about an issue — namely the POTUS’s fitness — that does not exist!

Stick to what the hell you know, Sen. Scott.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Graham flip-flops … again!

Someone will have to explain to me why it’s such a big deal that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is now on record saying that Joe Biden was the “best man” to lead the country after the 1/6 insurrection.

Or that the South Carolina Republican had harsh things to say about Donald Trump in the wake of that hideous event.

Why am I questioning all of this? Because Graham once said Trump was “unfit” to become president, that he is a “nut case,” and that Trump is a pathological liar. Graham was correct in his initial assessment of Donald Trump. He said all of that before becoming one of Trump’s biggest suck-up sycophants in the Senate.

Audio: Graham said after Jan. 6 that Biden was ‘best person to have’ (msn.com)

Yes, he did say he was done with Trump, that he had “enough” of him after the insurrection. He has gone on to blather incessantly about how Trump is a shoo-in to be nominated by Republicans in 2024 and that he would support him if he ran — once again! — for president.

The latest revelations come from the new book by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, who’ve already revealed lots of quotes — with recordings to back them up — from The Donald himself. They make my hair stand straight up.

Sen. Graham, though, has been among the greatest disappointments for me as I have watched the Donald Trump era in D.C. unfold since the 2016 presidential election.

To be candid, I believe about as much that comes from Lindsey Graham as I believe what flies out of Trump’s pie hole … which is not a damn thing!

Thus, I am confused as to why anyone should take anything this clown seriously. To borrow a phrase from Graham, who said this about Trump after the insurrection: I’m out.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Biden is MIA over protests

President Biden needs to step up and issue some stern words of condemnation for those who are threatening bodily harm to Supreme Court justices over their draft opinion on Roe v. Wade.

You know the story by now. Someone leaked a draft opinion stating that the court could overturn the landmark abortion-rights ruling later this year. It has prompted stern and passionate push back from those who want to see the 1973 ruling stand as written.

They have marched in front of the home of the author of the draft document, Justice Samuel Alito, and some protestors have said out loud that physical harm should come to Alito and other conservatives on the court.

Hold on, here! I join them in their anger over the draft opinion. I part company over the calls for violence. So should President Biden, who sadly hasn’t said anything publicly about language coming from some of the protestors.

As we have learned painfully from the horrific events of 1/6, words do matter.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Family to Cruz: go to hell!

The loved ones who welcomed home a young Texan who was held captive in Russia for more than two years have made an unusual declaration that they tucked in the middle of a thank-you statement to Texas politicians for their work in securing the young man’s release.

They blasted Sen. Ted Cruz for doing nothing to help win the release of Trevor Reed, whose father, Joey Reed, has declared his intention to defeat Cruz whenever the junior Republican senator decides to run for re-election.

The Reed family, who live in Granbury, thanked GOP U.S. Sen. John Cornyn for his help, along with GOP U.S. Reps. August Pfluger and Mike McCaul for what they did to secure Trevor’s release. They thanked President Biden for what he did, too.

“[Cruz] didn’t do anything,” Joey Reed said. “He’s an embarrassment to the state of Texas, let me just say that. I don’t care what or who runs against him, I will work for their campaign to defeat that son of a b-tch.”

Trevor Reed had been held for an assault he said he didn’t commit. The Biden administration was a bit slow to get involved, but it did and added the necessary push to persuade the Russians to release Reed in a prisoner exchange.

Ted Cruz was nowhere to be seen or heard … according to Joey Reed.

‘He’s an embarrassment’: Ted Cruz slammed by family of ex-Marine Trevor Reed after release from Russia (msn.com)

It’s unusual for the family of someone in the news to lash out in this manner, which makes me believe they have a point in singling out Cruz who, as I concluded long ago, only is interested in furthering his own needs.

Constituent service? Cruz couldn’t care less.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

How does he justify a return?

Donald Trump continues to rattle around out there, making speeches and issuing pronouncements and condemnations. He keeps yammering about the Big Lie and just cannot get past the fact that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Now we see an astonishing number of senior Trump aides turning on him.

The former attorney general, two former defense secretaries, a press secretary, aides to the ex-first lady, all have turned on The Donald.

He might be indicted for crimes committed during his term in office.

We keep hearing reports of totally bizarre notions coming from his mouth. How he considered bombing Mexico to stop drug traffickers. How he keeps talking about the size of his crowds and how all those cheering fanatics give his pronouncements credibility they do not deserve.

Oh, and how about the Mother’s Day message he sent out that was filled with epithets he hurled at left-leaning judges and anyone who opposes him?

This guy says he is thinking about running again for president. For the third time?

We’ve had one president serve two non-consecutive terms. Grover Cleveland was elected in 1884, lost re-election to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, then defeated President Harrison in 1892. Cleveland lost in 1888 because Harrison got enough Electoral College votes while Cleveland garnered more ballots. Hmm. Did the defeated Cleveland claim electoral theft? Nope.

I cannot yet come to grips with the notion that the former Moron in Chief is actually being considered a frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024. Oh, but wait! Now we hear from actual GOP politicians who are finally speaking out against the idiot.

All of this leaves me shaking my noggin in disbelief.

I am going to stick with my previously stated view that all of this is a sham. The Donald ain’t gonna run. I just wish he would fade away.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Yep, Biden took the call

Franklin Foer has smashed a myth about President Biden, that the president is too weak and not up to the myriad tasks that befall a POTUS at any hour of the day … or night.

Foer, writing an essay in The Atlantic, points out quite vividly that Joe Biden “answered the call” that came to him around 3 a.m.

He writes about the time Hillary Clinton sought to exploit 2008 presidential campaign rival Barack Obama’s inexperience with an ad that wondered whether the future president would be able to “answer the call.” Well, he did answer the call, just as Joe Biden is doing now.

Biden Answered the 3 a.m. Call – The Atlantic

As his article in The Atlantic noted about Biden’s response to the Ukraine War: Joe Biden hasn’t received the full credit he deserves for his statecraft during this crisis, because he has pursued a policy of self-effacement. Rather than touting his accomplishments in mobilizing a unified global response to the invasion, he has portrayed the stringent sanctions as the triumph of an alliance. By carefully limiting his own public role—and letting France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz take turns as the lead faces of NATO—he has left Vladimir Putin with little opportunity to portray the conflict as a standoff with the United States, a narrative that the Russian leader would clearly prefer. He’s shown how to wield American leadership in the face of deep European ambivalence about its exercise.

The Trumpkins among us keep telling us that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine were The Donald still in the White House. Hmm. Probably not. Likely because The Donald would have looked the other way while Putin sought to bring neighboring states to heel.

Joe Biden has performed masterfully in applying his diplomatic skill and experience to produce a united front throughout Europe against the unprovoked, illegal, immoral invasion of Ukraine.

To suggest that the president of the United States has failed in responding to an urgent world crisis is to talk utter trash.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news

Jobs piling up, unemployment low … huh?

The U.S. Labor Department each month gives us a snapshot of where the nation’s economy stands. It comes in the form of its jobs report.

What did the Labor stats show us this month? Oh, that private non-farm employers added 428,000 more Americans to their payrolls and that joblessness remains at 3.6%, or at the same level it stood prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Still, and this just baffles me to the point of confusion: President Biden keeps getting pilloried because the economy — according to the critics — is “in the tank.”

Is it? Not really. Actually, the economy is humming along fairly well.

Now, I will acknowledge the obvious “elephant in the room,” which would be inflation. I don’t like paying more for eggs, bread, milk, veggies and meat any more than the next red-blooded American. Nor do I like shelling out huge piles of dough for motor fuel. Is that totally within the president’s control? No. It isn’t even close.

We have this war erupting in Ukraine, which produces a lot of the world’s grain. Russian oil has been all but cut off from the rest of the world. Demand for all of that is high; supply is low. Hmm. High demand and low supply? What does that mean? We pay more for goods and commodities.

Biden is trying to help stem the rise in fuel prices by ordering the tapping of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He wants the SPR to ship 1 million barrels of crude oil each day for six months to help boost the supply of oil.

I am not going to criticize the president’s handling of the economy. He was dealt a bad hand when he took office in January 2021. The pandemic crippled the so-called “supply chain.” We are working our way through that crisis.

Meanwhile, we keep adding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month and the unemployment rate remains just about at rock bottom.

What in the name of realism is wrong with that?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

GOP could doom itself

Were I to rub a crystal ball and seek to predict the outcome of the 2022 midterm election, I might come up with …

The notion that the Republican Party is going to nominate enough certifiable fruitcakes to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Take the leading GOP candidate for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, as one example.

The nimrod whom GOP voters might nominate has declared that she won’t recognize President Biden as being legitimately elected in 2020. She will work to overturn her state’s electoral result and hand the victory in Arizona to the loon Biden defeated for the presidency.

Therein might lie Democrats’ best chance to keep control of government. That is if Republicans manage to nominate similarly demented candidates for the U.S. House and Senate this year.

Hey, it can happen.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com