Tag Archives: GOP

legal news, national news

‘Law and order’ gives way to chaos

A truly astonishing metamorphosis is occurring within what we used to call a great American political party.

The Republican Party used to believe in law and order, in the sanctity of the badge that men and women wore while enforcing the law, in their belief that a strong police force was the best deterrent against runaway crime and chaos.

What’s happened to the GOP?

The FBI secured a legally acquired search warrant to allow agents into the home of a former Republican president of the U.S.A. and suddenly the FBI has become the enemy.

Now we find political progressives — whom conservatives once denigrated as being “soft on crime” — rushing to defend the FBI against the attacks coming … from the right!

The metamorphosis is unbecoming in the extreme. For instance, it features physical threats against FBI agents, with threats of “civil war” coming from the very individuals who in another era would never utter such nonsense out loud.

The world has gone nuts!

It seems the change is the direct result of the cult that has formed around a former president of the United States. The cult places idolatry of the former POTUS ahead of all else, even time-tested policies and philosophies that once formed the basis of the once-great political party.

For as long as the cult dictates how Americans shall behave, there will be no making sense of what is occurring. It does require those of us who oppose the cult to remain vigilant and alert to the dangers the cult followers present.

Indeed, any “talk” of civil war must not devolve into the real thing. We did that once in this country. It nearly destroyed us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

One for two in midterms?

Handicapping political races is among the more dicey endeavors I ever have tried, which is why I am shying away from handicapping the 2022 midterm contests.

Specifically, it is dangerous to predict how the midterm elections will turn out, which party will control Congress’s two legislative chambers.

I do have an idea based on trends I keep hearing about.

The U.S. Senate might not flip from Democratic to Republican control. What’s happening? It appears the GOP is shooting itself in both feet by fielding certifiable nut cases in key races they had hoped to keep or flip into GOP control.

Mehmet Oz is running for the Senate in Pennsylvania. One problem: He doesn’t live there; he hangs his hat in New Jersey. His opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, appears to be pulling away. GOP Sen. Pat Toomey is retiring, so that one might flip from R to D.

Ohio might go from red to blue also. Republican Sen. Rob Portman is retiring. Rep. Tim Ryan is the Democrat running to succeed him. The GOP challenger is J.D. Vance, another nut job. Ryan is leading and he, too, could pull away. Another state might go from R to D.

Democrats appear set to hold onto two seats formerly thought to be ripe for the picking. Sen. Mark Kelly is looking strong against his GOP challenger. My favorite contest this year could be Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock vs. GOP dumbass Herchel Walker. The Rs thought Walker could pilfer this one. They are wrong. Walker’s only claim to any sort of fame is his stellar college and pro football career. Beyond that? This man might be the most unfit candidate ever to suit up for a political office.

One more: GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin might get tossed out by Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes. Oh, how I would love to see that occur.

The Senate stands at 50-50. When the ballots are counted in November, it could be a 53-47 Democratic majority.

The House? That one looks more problematic for Democrats, although I keep seeing that the projections for a “Red Wave” are diminishing from a tsunami to a pebble in a puddle.

It is going to be an invigorating and likely angst-ridden election season coming up. The spirit of our democratic process — despite Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert it — appears to be alive and well.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Cheney: losing candidate actually ‘wins’

You know, it’s not every day that a candidate for Congress from the least-populated state in America becomes an instant potential frontrunning candidate for the presidency of the United States.

I believe that is what is happening with Liz Cheney, the lame-duck Wyoming Republican congresswoman who on Tuesday got buried under a relative landslide.

Cheney lost the GOP primary to Harriet Hageman, whom Donald Trump had endorsed. Trump has a serious hate on for Cheney because Cheney had the temerity to cast a pro-impeachment vote against Trump after he incited the 1/6 insurrectionist mob on the Capitol Building.

Cheney now has become Public Enemy No. 1 in the world of Trump.

Now, what about Cheney?

She lost her bid for a fourth term in the U.S. House. She is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. She is as conservative as they come, yet she now is considered a Republican In Name Only because of her outrage at Trump’s incitement of the treasonous mob on 1/6.

Cheney did not congratulate Hageman while delivering her concession speech Tuesday evening. Instead, she said the “real work” is just beginning. Media observers picked up on what they believe is a thinly veiled declaration that she might run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 … particularly if Trump decides to jump back into electoral politics.

In a normal political environment, Liz Cheney’s loss in a Wyoming Republican primary would disappear from the news cycle before dawn of the next day. This isn’t a normal environment, though.

Liz Cheney now becomes a potential national player. She vows to devote the rest of her time in Congress seeking to keep Trump from re-entering the Oval Office. I wish her well in that effort.

The political landscape has become so topsy-turvy simply because Liz Cheney lost a Republican Party primary in a state that formerly mattered to few Americans.

It damn sure matters now!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

This is on you, Wyoming

I want to direct these remarks to Wyoming Republicans who, when the ballots were counted last night, voted against the government they swore to preserve and protect.

They put their own party ahead of the country. They stood behind an individual who seeks to dismantle our democratic system of government. They rejected an incumbent member of Congress who, for the past several years, has voted consistently in favor of the very issues many in that beautiful state hold near and dear.

I have one friend in Wyoming. I don’t know how he voted, but my guess is that he did not vote for the individual who won more votes than Rep. Liz Cheney.

Cheney conceded in fine fashion Tuesday night, but she said something that is going to carry over for a long while. Cheney, who lost to a Donald Trump-backed primary foe, declared that “now the real work begins.”

Hmm. Real work? Would that include, dare I ask, a potential run for president in 2024 in a Republican Party field that might include the former twice-impeached POTUS?

Cheney lost her state’s GOP congressional primary for the right reasons. She lost because she stood for the rule of law and because she remains faithful to the oath of office she took, the one that requires her to protect and defend the Constitution. Her opponent, Harriet Hageman, won the primary for the wrong reasons. She won because she has adopted The Big Lie and because she is more loyal to Trump than to the Constitution.

That is the state of play in Wyoming these days.

Liz Cheney vows to continue to work toward preventing Trump from ever darkening the White House door. I wish her well in that effort. As for the Republican voters who turned against her because of her fealty to the sacred oath she took, they all have slathered themselves in shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Is she for real … or what?

The quotation you see with this very brief blog post comes from the House of Reps’ QAnon queen herself, Marjorie Taylor Greene of the 14th Congressional District of Georgia.

Yes, she’s a Republican.

I don’t know quite how to respond to this comment. I have been advised by those on social media that it’s the real thing. It ain’t made up. She actually said this.

Oh, my.

Just think that his nitwit is actually voting on federal laws that we all have to obey. Just read the attached message and ask yourself: Did the people of this congressional district really buy into this when they put her into office?

Wow!

Johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

How do you campaign on Trump coattails?

Harriet Hageman is likely to become the next Republican nominee to run for Wyoming’s sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

If she defeats Rep. Liz Cheney in today’s GOP primary, she’s a sure bet to win the election this November against whomever Democrats nominate.

It causes me to wonder: How has Hageman campaigned against Cheney, whose only “sin” as I see it is that she has been highly critical of Donald Trump’s criminal behavior while he masqueraded as president of the U.S.A.

In latest primary night, 2 Trump critics face voters as Palin eyes a comeback (msn.com)

So, what does a Harriet Hageman stump speech sound like?

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Harriet Hageman and I am running as the protector of a twice-impeached U.S. president.

My opponent, Liz Cheney, has betrayed her office by standing for the rule of law. She has declared her intention to do all she can to keep the former president from getting anywhere near the Oval Office.  That is unacceptable!

Her voting record in Congress? That doesn’t matter. Nor does it matter that she voted with Donald Trump more than 92% of the time. Or that she has been adamantly pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, fervently anti-tax and equally fervently anti-Obamacare. 

Has she represented the will of our state? No. Because she won’t profess fealty to Donald Trump.

***

That, of course, is an absurd example of how Hageman has campaigned for the office. I just don’t know how she can be “more conservative” than Liz Cheney, or how she can justify running against a House member who is faithful to her party’s long-standing platform of favoring the rule of law.

If the polls are correct, and I tend to believe they are, then the rest of the country is going to see what happens to a politician who is (a) faithful to her oath and (b) critical of a president who is faithful only to his own lust for power.

These primary voters will be forever cast in shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Next up? Liz Cheney!

Liz Cheney is facing the fight of her political life on Tuesday and from all appearances, it’s a fight she is likely lose.

The Wyoming Republican congresswoman is being challenged by a candidate in the GOP primary who carries Donald J. Trump’s endorsement. The Trumpkin appears headed for victory in the primary.

Cheney is the final GOP member of Congress who voted to impeach Trump who will face an electorate angry over that vote. Most of the other nine Republicans who cast affirmative impeachment votes have fared poorly as well as they have sought re-election to Congress.

Am I going to shed a tear for Liz Cheney? Not really. I want her to win the Wyoming Republican primary. Not because of her staunch conservative voting record. Instead, because she has shown enormous fortitude in standing up to Trump’s lies, his quest for power, his flouting of the rule of law and his persistent retelling of The Big Lie about non-existent 2020 wide-spread voter fraud.

Something tells me, though, that even if Cheney loses the GOP primary in Wyoming that she is far from finishing her final act on the political stage.

I’ll just be left to condemn what has transpired in the Republican Party in this age of Trump, when lying, cheating and corruption become accepted behavior.

Shameful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, environmental news, Joe Biden

Democrats have earned it

President Biden is going to get a bill quite soon that won’t have any Republican votes attached to it. The blunt truth is that I wished for at least a smattering of GOP support from Congress to send the Inflation Reduction Act to the president.

Alas, it didn’t happen. However, I am going to say loudly and clearly that Democrats in the Senate and the House have done well for those of they represent across the land.

House Democrats today stood together to enact the IRA. It seeks to reduce inflation, seeks to reduce carbon emissions, seeks to reduce the cost of drugs.

Republicans, of course, say it doesn’t do anything to help us. I will disagree with their bloviating.

The Inflation Reduction Act represents a significant effort to curb climate change. Indeed, it is this nation’s largest-ever investment to help curb carbon emissions.

I have to ask: Why is that a bad thing?

It’s not a bad thing at all! Republican obstructionists, though, remain bound to their commitment to block anything President Biden and Democrats want to accomplish.

It is to their everlasting shame. Democrats, meanwhile, have earned the nation’s gratitude. They have, as Joe Biden once declared, produced a big fu**ing deal.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

AG shows his anger

Merrick Garland doesn’t strike me as an individual who usually wears his emotions on his shirt pocket.

However, today he demonstrated an angry streak that, frankly, I found reassuring. The attorney general took dead aim at those critics on the far right who have leveled bizarre accusations against the FBI, accusing agents of “planting evidence” at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

President Barack Obama wanted Garland to take a seat on the Supreme Court. He nominated the former D.C. Appeals Court judge to the court in early 2016, only to be stymied by Senate Republicans.

Now he’s the nation’s AG and is investigating whether Donald Trump broke the law in seeking to deny the transfer of power from the Trump administration to the administration led by Joe Biden, the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

U.S. Attorney General Garland confirms FBI investigating Trump (msn.com)

Garland is working against considerable blowback by the right-wingers among us. They are threatening him with congressional persecution. They have accused federal agents of planting evidence at Trump’s glitzy resort.

The AG fired back today, reminding us that the men and women who work for the FBI are patriotic professionals and that he will not tolerate the agency’s enemies leveling the kind of accusations they are leveling at the FBI.

Think of the irony. Republicans long have been associated with the belief that law enforcement is the friend of Americans. Now they are vilifying the FBI. Why? Because they are examining whether the far-right’s guru, Donald J. Trump, has broken the law.

The far-right wingers among us are exhibiting a shameful demonstration of hypocrisy as they denigrate the FBI and threaten the attorney general.

AG Merrick Garland should not have felt compelled to defend the men and women who protect us every single day against those who would do us harm, but he did so today … and he made me proud.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Reaction puzzles me

The initial Republican Party reaction to the FBI agents’ search for records within Donald J. Trump’s glitzy south Florida mansion has me a little bit puzzled.

I don’t hear much defense of the ex-POTUS’s conduct coming from the GOP faithful. Who out there is willing to say that it’s all right for a president to squirrel away classified documents taken from the White House? Who is willing to say it’s OK for a president — as it has been reported — to flush documents down the toilet or burn ’em in a fireplace?

No, we’re hearing instead are accusations about “weaponization” of the Justice Department and the FBI. Some GOP lawmakers are suggesting that Attorney General Merrick Garland needs to either resign or be impeached. For what? For following up on his pledge to ensure that “no one is above the law”? When the AG says “no one,” he means, well, no one, not even a former president of the United States.

The hysterical reaction from the hysterical right wing, though, is laughable … except that it ain’t funny.

What does make me chuckle — but only a little bit — is that the right-wingers just aren’t going to say that Donald Trump didn’t do anything wrong.

The man is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

As for the Justice Department’s search for wrongdoing, it would be foolish to believe that DOJ — at this juncture of the probe — is going to go easy on what appears to be a mountain of evidence that implicates the man who once took an oath to protect the Constitution, but who in reality launched an all-out attack on it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com