crime news

Is the SUV color that vital?

The media keep repeating something that has me wondering about its relevance and importance.

An SUV plowed through a Christmas festival crowd in Waukesha, Wisc., over the weekend. Five people died. Dozens more were injured. Many of the injured are children and several of those children are in ICU and are listed in critical condition. Our hearts break for the victims and pray that the injured recover.

But why are the media reporting constantly that the SUV is a red vehicle? “A red SUV drove at a high rate of speed … “ And so it goes.

Is the color of the vehicle so relevant that it matters in reporting on this human tragedy? Someone needs to explain it to me. Please.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news, State news

Texas’s newest residents get stiffed

Texas is going to get two more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Why? Because our state grew significantly during the past 10 years.

The population boom was fueled by more African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians flocking to the state. The word is that these folks generally vote Democratic. So, it was believed that the state’s changing demography was going to make the state more, um, divided politically.

Well, the Legislature took care of that by gerrymandering the new congressional and legislative districts to ensure that the Republican Party maintains its chokehold on power.

The Legislature takes command of the redistricting effort every decade. The 2020 census shows the state achieving additional power in Congress with those two new seats. However, Republicans are big winners, given the way the Legislature reconfigured all those boundaries.

Collin County, where I now reside, was turned into an even heavier GOP-friendly place; Collin County voted narrowly for Donald Trump in 2020, but would have voted significantly more for the ex-POTUS had the new borders been in effect.

I am scratching my noodle on this one. Is this the way “representative democracy” is supposed to work?

I think not.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Fox News takes needed hit

The liars at Fox News have been given notice by two of their contributors, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, that they — the contributors — will not tolerate the lies broadcast by Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson.

Goldberg and Hayes said they cannot stand with the network after it broadcast Carlson’s special on the 1/6 insurrection. Carlson called it “Patriot Purge,” and according to Goldberg and Hayes — two leading conservative thinkers and columnists — the program was full of lies, distortions and unfounded conspiracy rumors. They won’t be part of a network that allows such lying to go unchallenged.

Good for them.

To be honest, I didn’t watch it. I don’t need to watch what I know it contains. I have heard Carlson spew much of the trash I know he poured into the production of “Patriot Purge.”

According to The Wrap: Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” has drawn sharp criticism since its launch, with the Anti-Defamation League calling on Fox News to cancel it. “Let’s call this what it is: an abject, indisputable lie, and a blatant attempt to rewrite history,” ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a letter addressed to Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch. Greenblatt expressed alarm that the “false narrative and wild conspiracy theories” presented in “Patriot Purge” could “sow further division” and possibly “animate violence.”

Fox News has given itself ample reason to be ashamed of itself. Carlson’s phony documentary is just one more example of the lies that pour forth from a network that once boasted to be “fair and balanced.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Despise the separation between the parties

One of the many things I detest about the state of the contemporary political climate in Texas is the absence of a sense of statewide camaraderie among the state’s congressional delegation.

There once was a time, back when Fort Worth’s Jim Wright was speaker of the U.S. House, when the entire Texas delegation would meet for breakfast each week. Democrats and Republicans would gather to discuss issues common to everyone within the delegation. They sought a meeting of their collective minds on ways to solve Texas problems.

My own congressman at the time, the late Democrat Jack Brooks, spoke fondly — if that’s a word I could use to describe anything that came from that cantankerous politician’s mouth — of the fellowship the delegation would enjoy.

I remember a story I read in Congressional Quarterly about those meetings and how they contrasted with the bitterness that existed between Democrats and Republicans in the California delegation. The Texans sought common ground. Californians drifted apart, firing rhetorical sniper shots at each other.

The Texas delegation no longer meets regularly, as I understand it. Democrats and Republicans are at each other’s throats most of the time. It’s a common affliction most if not all state delegations in Congress. I’m trying to imagine ultraconservative Louie Gohmert sitting next to ultraliberal Lloyd Doggett hashing out a legislative solution to anything.

I hear that my own House member, Republican Van Taylor of Plano, works well with Democrats. He has sponsored bipartisan legislation and actually counts Democrats among his friends in Washington. That, I dare say, is a commendable thing to have happen. I attribute that to his combat experience in the Middle East while serving in the Marine Corps. Everyone becomes your best friend when you’re receiving enemy fire and you depend on the guy next to you … who likewise is depending on you to have his back.

There needs to be much more of that and much less of the sniping, backbiting, name-calling and actual threats of violence about which we hear these days.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Texas Democrats take another gut punch

Ryan Guillen no longer is a Democrat, having switched party affiliation to Republican.

That’s a big deal? You betcha. Especially  when the party-switcher is a longtime Democratic legislator from South Texas who told his former party leaders that the Democratic Party has abandoned him; so he is becoming a Republican.

This is grim news for Texas Democratic Party officials who keep telling the world about how the tide in Texas is turning from Republican Red to Democratic Blue. But … is it?

RealClearPolitics reports: While Guillen is a state lawmaker whose switch won’t impact which party holds power in Washington, there’s one sign that this may not be an isolated example: At least nine congressional House Democrats have  announced they are not seeking reelection next year. More are expected to follow.

As for the impact on the state’s political fortunes, Guillen’s switcheroo seems to portend something ominous for a party that contends the changing Texas demography suggests that Democrats are on the rise and Republicans are sinking.

I am not so sure about that. Just yet anyway.

Guillen is a Texas Latino who believes the Democratic Party has taken him for granted along with those who share his ethnicity.

Texas Party Switcher Is Latest Ominous Sign for Democrats | RealClearPolitics

I used to call the Golden Triangle home. The Triangle is in deep Southeast Texas, where Democrats until the early 1990s continued to occupy virtually every county elected office in sight. That began changing about the time I moved from Beaumont to the other corner of the state, in Republican-heavy Amarillo.

Republicans now occupy every statewide office in Texas and a heavy majority of the local offices as well. Dallas County, next door to us in our new home in Collin County, remains a heavily Democratic bastion.

So, if Democrats intend to regain any semblance of influence in Texas, they need to heed the admonition of one of its veteran former legislative representatives: stop taking your core constituency for granted.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Once more about young Kyle Rittenhouse

OK. I just gotta weigh in with another thought about Kyle Rittenhouse before I move on to, oh, something else.

The young man heard about this protest occurring in Kenosha, Wis. What did he do? He got into his car and drove from neighboring Pleasant Prairie to the city on the Lake Michigan shore. He had an AR-15 and some ammo that he had put into the magazine.

He pranced along the street with the weapon and shot two men to death. Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty and went to trial, where he claimed — while sobbing — that he shot the men while defending himself against their attack on him. Self-defense, he said.

The jury believed him. Rittenhouse’s legal team did a stellar job of making him something of a sympathetic character. To be honest, it looked to me — based on what I heard and read — that the defense team out-lawyered the prosecutors.

So, young Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted.

I am still struck by the notion that he went to Kenosha in the first place as a 17-year-old looking to mix it up with protesters complaining about police brutality against African-Americans. He found what he seemed to be looking for; two men paid the price for their encounter with Rittenhouse.

I’ll accept the jury’s verdict, not because I necessarily endorse the defense narrative he delivered. I accept the verdict because I have a strong belief in our jury trial system.

However, if the kid had just stayed home and not rushed onto the Kenosha streets with that AR-15. He went looking for trouble and he found it.

I am out!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS to get kicked around?

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Mitch McConnell has demonstrated a clear ability — and a tendency — to play hardball politics whenever the need arises in his own pointed head.

Think about how the Senate Republican leader can manipulate things in the event the GOP takes control of the U.S. Senate after the 2022 midterm election.

Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer might retire from the court. Say, he does so at the end of the current term, which arrives in late June or early July 2022. President Biden has to select a nominee immediately after such a retirement occurs. McConnell well might decide to throw up roadblocks anticipating a GOP takeover of the Senate in November 2022.

What might occur, then, if the GOP wins a Senate majority, seats a new Senate in January 2023 and Biden’s SCOTUS nominee still hasn’t had a hearing, let alone a vote? I’ll tell you what’ll happen. The GOP-led Senate could scuttle a Biden choice and then McConnell could decide to replay the tactic he used in 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly. President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the court, but McConnell torpedoed the nomination, refusing to grant Garland a hearing. Why? Because we had an election months away and McConnell said the next president deserved the right to select someone. The next president happened to be Donald J. Trump and, well, you know the rest of it.

This all seems to give a Breyer decision on whether he stays on the court a good bit more of a time urgency. I don’t expect Justice Breyer to act on the wishes of others around him. He is entitled to walk away on his own terms and on his own schedule.

The nation’s highest court, though, does not need or deserve to be kicked around like the political football some in the Senate have made it out to be.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, national news

Vote ‘no’ and take the dough

I should direct these comments to the Republicans who comprise the Texas congressional delegation.

All of ’em, to a person, voted “no” on President Biden’s infrastructure proposal and on the $1.7 trillion package billed as Build Back Better.

Some of them have issued harsh policy statements criticizing Biden as well as their Democratic colleagues, calling them “socialists” and “spendthrift” liberals who don’t give a damn about the national debt.

Ah, yes. But … will they say “no” when the government starts parceling the money to their states or congressional districts? Hardly!

Indeed, I fully expect some of them to actually use these improvements as grist for their re-election efforts in 2022 and beyond. Will they realize or recognize the hypocrisy of that message? Not even, man!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump

I’m out, once again

So help me Almighty God in heaven, I am going to make yet another stab at turning my back on the antics and blathering of the most recent former president of the United States.

It has been hard to keep earlier pledges to do so. I mean, the guy keeps making news. He keeps roiling the waters. He keeps telling The Big Lie, which I have tried every way I know how to refute; I am exhausted trying to tell y’all the truth, which is The Big Lie is what it is and that the 2020 election was not “stolen” by “extensive voter fraud.”

The imbecile who got elected POTUS in 2016 just won’t let it die. Indeed, as he yaps and yammers about running for the highest office in 2024 he keeps bringing up the past. He has no future vision. I mean, holy sh**, he doesn’t have any vision of any kind that is worth discussing.

What do I go from here? Where do any of us go?

I am going to try once more to put this clown away. Put him in the Dumpster where his hideous legacy already is housed. The guy had no business being elected POTUS in the first place. He got precisely what he deserved when President Biden drummed his sorry oversized a** out of office in 2020.

He is a carnival barker. He is a fraud. He well might get indicted for criminal acts before too long; that, right there, might be cause to make make comment.

The rest of it? I’m out … I hope.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Hoffa’s remains found? Maybe?

Forty-six years ago some mobsters kidnapped Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa and took him somewhere to kill him.

His remains never have been found. Until now. Maybe.

Someone reportedly found a barrel with human remains under a New Jersey bridge. The remains will be taken somewhere for careful forensic examination and evaluation.

James Hoffa remains might have been found 46 years later (msn.com)

It’s been so long since Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975 and there have been so many conspiracies floated about where he ended up that it well might be that the conspiracies won’t die any time soon. There even have been sick jokes tossed out there; some of them, I admit, have actually made me laugh out loud.

However, Hoffa’s family surely needs some closure to this drama. I decline to call it a “tragedy,” because Jimmy Hoffa was not a sympathetic character. He was a bad dude who hung out with other bad dudes.

However, I am hoping this supposed discovery provides an ending.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience