Tag Archives: Joe Biden

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

media news

WH reporters’ dinner is back

1 Comment

This much came through as I watched President Biden do a brief comic riff from the podium at the newly reinstated White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

It is that he ain’t no Barack Obama, one of his predecessors whose comic timing is good enough for the former POTUS to take on the road.

Still, it was good to see Joe Biden laughing at himself along with the insults hurled at others in the room and around the country.

The coronavirus pandemic nixed the previous two WH reporters’ dinners. Biden’s immediate predecessor in the White House labeled the media the “enemy of the people,” so there would be no way on God’s good Earth he would — or could — appear before those he despised. That means Biden was the first president to appear at this event in six years.

The event that began during the Calvin Coolidge administration has been set aside for Washington to take a light-hearted look at itself and to salute and honor the journalists who report the news to the world. Particularly poignant Saturday night was the tribute to journalists who have died covering the news, reminding us that even the messengers of world events can become victims of those events.

Some, moreover, have been held captive for years. Why? Because they reported the truth.

OK, I started this blog by saying that Joe Biden isn’t as clever with the quip as Barack Obama. I am going to assign him an “A” grade nonetheless for being a thick-skinned good sport during a troubled time. There is nothing wrong with that.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Can there be a more frightening outcome?

Believe me, please, when I say that I do not scare easily. It takes a lot to rattle this old man, a guy who’s been shelled by enemy troops, flown over an erupting volcano and been catapulted off the deck of a nuclear-powered U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

Thus, when I say something gives me the willies, know that it’s for real. I can think of nothing more frightening to our cherished American system of representative democracy than to see Donald J. Trump return to within spitting distance of the White House.

I want to add an important caveat to this notion, which is that I remain highly dubious that the former POTUS is going to run for the office in 2024. I will not swallow the swill being offered by pundits who contend that at this moment he is frontrunner for the Republican Party presidential nomination.

I also want to point out that Trump’s fundamental message is the same as it was when Joe Biden thumped his ass in the 2020 election: the election was stolen. Dammit to hell! It wasn’t! President Biden was elected fairly, squarely and legally. The boring message that Trump keeps delivering is beginning to fall on an increasing number of GOP deaf ears.

For the United States to return to the days of pathological lying, of incompetence at every level of the executive branch of government, of a president who is scorned and ridiculed by our nation’s allies and seeks to cozy up to a bully who has been committing crimes against humanity in his illegal Ukraine War signals a collective depravity I didn’t think could exist in this great nation.

We’re going to have our midterm election soon. Then we’ll start digesting news about the GOP field that will take shape for the next presidential contest. As the Almighty is my witness, I cannot fathom how our great nation could allow itself to be sucked into the abyss that awaits were it to bring back the Trump Era.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

NATO stands as one

It is impossible to overstate the diplomatic victory that President Biden has scored as he seeks to get Russia to stand down in its military invasion of Ukraine.

The victory involves the unanimous support for Ukraine by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which leads me to hope — if not yet believe — that Russian goon Vladimir Putin will resist launching an attack on any of the NATO nations that border Ukraine.

NATO has this document called Article V, which declares that an attack on a single NATO nation is an attack on all of them. It reminds me of the warning President Kennedy issued in October 1962 when the USSR was erecting missile launch sites in Cuba; JFK told the Soviet leadership that an attack against any nation in the Western Hemisphere would bring a “full retaliatory response” from the United States.

President Biden has made essentially the same declaration, as has NATO, which is that the organization formed to protect Western Europe against the Soviet threat would respond collectively if the  Russians attacked any NATO state.

Think of where U.S.-NATO relations have gone since the Donald Trump administration. Trump castigated NATO over whether European members were paying their fair share of the cost. Yes, many of the nations have stepped up their financial load, but they did not trust the U.S. president to be there if a crisis exploded.

President Biden has helped restore that trust and in the process well might have acquired some leverage to keep the Russians from committing an act of utter foolishness.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Handle prisoner swaps carefully

Trevor Reed’s release from a Russian prison cell thrills me greatly. The young Texan, a former Marine, is now home after spending 900-plus days in prison for a crime he denies committing.

The Biden administration and members of the Texas congressional delegation worked hard to secure Reed’s release. He’s now home. I wish the young man well as he recovers his health and his emotional well-being.

Now, though, comes a word of caution.

President Biden agreed to swap Reed for a Russian who was held in our prison system. The exchange took place the way it’s done in the movies; the two men walked past each other without saying a word.

I will not dispute the need to do whatever it takes to Americans freed from wrongful imprisonment. I just hope we don’t get too carried away with this idea of releasing foreign bad guys who well could be released to do harm to us.

We still need to get two more Americans out of prison in Russia. Paul Whelan has been held for a couple of years on spying charges; Brittany Griner, a woman’s basketball star, was arrested by airport security agents for trying to board an airplane carrying cannabis products in her baggage.

We need to get these Americans home, too. I just want the administration to be careful about sending Russian lawbreakers back to where they could do harm to this country or our allies.

Do the ends justify the means? In this case, yes … but not every single time.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com