Tag Archives: insurrection

national news

Gut punches keep coming

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My gut has been getting punched repeatedly with news reports that just sicken it … and me!

It’s not enough that we had an insurrection against the federal government six days into the new year. Nor is it enough that we impeached a president for the second time as a result and then endured another acquittal of the guy who should have been convicted and tossed out of office the first time.

We keep hearing about and watching news reports of police officers shooting African-American men in incidents that make me wonder: Would this happen if the individual being rousted were a white guy? Protests are mounting. They have turned into riots.

It’s giving me tremendous anxiety as I watch this from my quiet neighborhood. All this unrest, this anger, this anxiety looks to me as if it has the potential of exploding into a hideous national crisis.

A former Minneapolis cop is on trial for murder in an incident that killed a black man; a young African-American was shot to death by a Minnesota cop, who then quit along with her boss, the chief of police; a black Army officer was pepper-sprayed in December by a white officer in Virginia.

The victim in Minneapolis was killed after he sought to pass a counterfeit bill; the young man died in nearby Brooklyn Heights after he was stopped because he hung an air freshener from his rearview mirror; the Army officer was pepper sprayed because he didn’t have a license plate on the rear of his motor vehicle, which he had just purchased. 

These are just the most recent instances of violence being committed against black Americans by police officers who, um, are not black.

Man, this is disheartening and frightening. I am weary of all these gut punches.

DC riot

Mitch gets roughed up by his guy … Donald

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

How much more verbal abuse can Mitch McConnell take from Donald Trump?

That’s my question of the moment after hearing what Trump said about the U.S. Senate Republican leader at that GOP donors dinner in Florida this weekend.

Trump called McConnell a “dumb son of a bi***” and a “stone-cold loser.” Oh, and Trump also lambasted other Republicans in the House and Senate who said some mean things about him, not to mention the insults he hurled at Democrats. Let’s not forget that Trump also trashed former Vice President Mike Pence because Pence didn’t do Trump’s bidding, which would have required him to violate the U.S. Constitution.

I ask this about Mitch because of something McConnell said about Trump shortly after The Donald left the presidency. He said — and this is astonishing — that he would “absolutely” support Trump were he to become the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee.

He threw his support behind Trump after declaring that ex-POTUS was responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, that he “provoked” the mob of terrorists to storm the Capitol Building and prevent the counting of Electoral College votes certifying the election of Joe Biden as the next president.

So, McConnell endorses a possible — but in my view highly unlikely — Trump presidential candidacy. What does he get in return? Yet another verbal slap in the puss from the former Imbecile in Chief.

national news

Yep, Trump incited riot

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This lawsuit isn’t likely to go anywhere, but it still needs to be pursued and discussed openly.

Several members of Congress have sued Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani for inciting the Jan. 6 riot that sought to subvert the nation’s democratic process.

The latest congressional representative to join the suit is Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat, who said in a statement reported by the Texas Tribune: In Escobar’s statement, she recounts receiving text messages from her family asking if she was safe and noticing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other people being escorted away by law enforcement officers. She recalls hearing shouts, banging from the outside, being instructed by police to wear a gas mask and how “her heart began racing” as the riot unfolded.

It’s not clear to me what the plaintiffs hope to reap from a lawsuit against the ex-president and his personal lawyer.

Veronica Escobar joins suit accusing Trump of inciting Capitol riot | The Texas Tribune

But you know what? This discussion ought to move forward.

“President Trump did not incite or conspire to incite any violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” according to Jason Miller, a key Trump aide.

Miller needs a serious reality check. For that matter, so does his boss, Trump … although no amount of reality ever is going to persuade the former Insurrectionist in Chief of his wrongdoing.

The entire world saw what developed on Jan. 6. Trump kept hurling the Big Lie about the 2020 election, that it was “stolen” by those who perpetrated a phony “widespread vote fraud.” The crowd stormed Capitol Hill, broke into the Capitol Building, threatened to “hang Mike Pence!” and defecated on the floor of the seat of our democracy.

For as long as this chilling episode remains relevant, I welcome the members of Congress who have the courage to take their grievances against Donald Trump and his lawyer to court.

DC riot, national news

Mulvaney calls it correctly

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald John Trump’s delusion continues even as he tees it up at his posh South Florida resort.

The ex-president told Fox News that the Jan. 6 insurrection from the riotous mob of terrorists posed “zero threat.”

That brought a sharp rebuke from one of Trump’s chief defenders/enablers, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who told CNN that Trump’s remarks are “manifestly false.”

“I was surprised to hear the president say that … Clearly, there were people who were behaving themselves and then there were people who absolutely were not,” Mulvaney told CNN.

Mulvaney calls Trump’s comments on Capitol riot ‘manifestly false’ | TheHill

No. They were not behaving themselves.

And yet Donald Trump continues to lie incessantly.

The riot’s aim was to stop Congress from doing its constitutional duty on Jan. 6, which was to certify the results of the presidential election. It was a violent attempted insurrection. It was an act of sedition. It was profoundly violent and dangerous!

I am no fan of Mick Mulvaney. However, I am glad to hear him speak the truth about the delusion that rumbles around in the head of his former boss.

national news

Not an ‘insurrection?’ Are they serious?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Terrible Ten members of the U.S. House of Representatives have shamed the Capitol Police Department officers who were injured in a desperate attempt to protect them from insurrectionists on Jan. 6.

Yep, their refusal to support honoring the police officers who fought off the mob still stick in my craw. Congress eventually voted to award them the Congressional Gold Medal over the objections of the 10 nut jobs who just didn’t like the word “insurrectionists” inserted into the resolution honoring the officers.

Oh, let’s not forget that one of the Capitol cops who fought the rioting terrorists died in the melee.

What in the name of democracy do you call a mob that stormed the Capitol Building, beat officers to a pulp with flag poles carrying Donald Trump banners and Old Glory? What do you call those who shouted “Hang Mike Pence!” while they stormed the halls looking for the vice president of the United States? What in the name of decency do you call those who defecated on the floor of our democratic institutions while seeking to do physical harm to Speaker Nancy Pelosi?

That isn’t an insurrection? They sought to stop the counting of Electoral College votes that certified the election of Joe Biden as president and Kamala Harris as vice president.

By any definition I can conjure up, that is an insurrection.

Every single House member and senator who seeks to call it something else should be removed from office. They have disgraced the very government they took an oath to protect and defend.

DC riot

GOP lawmakers shame themselves

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Twelve members of the U.S. House of Representatives should be ashamed of themselves.

These individuals, all Republicans, voted “no” on a resolution granting the Congressional Gold Medal to the Capitol Police officers who fought to protect Congress from a mob of terrorists who stormed the Capitol Building on the Sixth of January.

These lawmakers reportedly objected to language contained in the resolution that referred to the “insurrection” that occurred on that horrible day.

What? That is precisely what the nation and the world witnessed. The mob was provoked by Donald Trump to do precisely what it did do. If what we saw wasn’t an insurrection,  then there is no active definition of the word.

Indeed, 12 lawmakers allowed there to be a bipartisan vote to award the gallant police officers — one of whom died in the melee — the Congressional Gold Medal. The stellar demonstration of bipartisanship is to be saluted.

However, the idiotic refusal of those dozen GOP legislators — and they include Rep. Louie Gohmert of Tyler, Texas — deserves our national scorn.

The resolution will go to the Senate for its expected approval. Let’s just wait to see who among the members of that chamber follows the moronic path being blazed by their House colleagues.

DC riot

Shades of ‘good people … on both sides’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ron Johnson has a screw loose in that vacuous noggin of his.

The Wisconsin Republican U.S. senator made a statement about the insurrection of The Sixth of January that truly makes me wonder about this clown’s fitness to serve in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

He told a Wisconsin radio interview several things, two of which stand out in my mind.

One is that the insurrection didn’t “scare me at all” because the terrorists were Donald Trump supporters. But … had the shoe been on the proverbial other foot and Trump had won the 2020 election and had Black Lives Matters or antifa followers had rioted in that fashion, why, then he would have felt endangered.

The racist tenor of that remark stands alone. It is hideous in the extreme. Oh, but then he said something else that makes my spine shudder.

He said the terrorists were “law-abiding” citizens who “would never do anything” against the law. Look at the picture I posted with this blog. It shows terrorists storming into the Capitol Building. Hmm. Oh, and they killed a Capitol Police officer during the melee and injured several others, not to mention causing the deaths of about five other Americans.

To which laws were these lunatics abiding? None.

It reminds me of Donald Trump’s infamous declaration after the KKK/Nazi-inspired riot in Charlottesville when he declared there to be “good people … on both sides” of that deadly riot.

Someone needs to slap a straitjacket on Sen. Johnson.

crime news

Will they still follow ‘our president’?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s see how this plays out.

Many of the rioters/terrorists on Jan. 6 looked into TV cameras and said they merely were doing what “our president” wanted them to do, which was to storm Capitol Hill, threaten to kill the vice president and commit an act of insurrection against the U.S. government.

So, will those individuals now commit to doing what “our president” asks us to do by wearing masks, practice social distancing and follow infectious disease experts’ guidelines and recommendations so we can kill the coronavirus?

Or are they interested only in destroying the nation rather than trying to protect it?

Hey, I’m just askin’ … for a friend.

national news

FBI boss: They were domestic terrorists

1 Comment

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

FBI Director Christopher Wray today said what many millions of Americans have thought — or known — since we saw it occur.

The mob that stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 comprised “domestic terrorists,” Wray told a congressional committee.

I do not intend here to denigrate the FBI boss … but duh!

Look, I respect this man a great deal. He has the toughest job imaginable, which includes investigating the crimes committed on the day the terrorist mob stormed into the Capitol Building while committing an undeniable act of insurrection against the U.S. government.

The fact that the FBI director has made this statement aloud and in public gives the discussion the kind of impetus it needs. Wray gives the domestic terror element an element of gravitas. 

Indeed, I am not at all surprised to hear Wray hang this label on the riotous mob. He has stated already that domestic terror presents the greatest existential threat to our national security. It poses a greater threat than any foreign terrorist organization; that includes ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Taliban … you name it.

What happens now with the investigation of criminal suspects? My hope, and I am can speak only for myself, is that the FBI is able to ratchet up the charges against those it arrests, that they are able to prosecute the suspects on suspicion of committing terrorist acts.

They were whipped into a frenzy on Jan. 6 by a president who was two weeks from leaving office. Donald Trump told them repeatedly on the Ellipse that the election he lost was “stolen” from him and he urged the crowd to take back the government from some nefarious forces he said were committing electoral thievery.

Yes, he got impeached for it and yes he avoid conviction in the Senate. The imprint left behind by the terrorists is indelible and the scars will take years, maybe decades to heal — if they ever do heal.

The terrorists wanted to execute Vice President Mike Pence; you can hear them shouting their intent as they stormed into the Capitol Building where the VP was doing his constitutional duty, which was to preside over the counting and certification of the Electoral College votes that elected President Joe Biden.

Man, if that ain’t terrorism, then it doesn’t exist anywhere.

I am relieved to hear that the FBI director has called it what we have known all along.

It well might be time to declare a new “war on terrorism.” 

Uncategorized

Is the ‘big tent’ folding?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Republicans are proud to proclaim their party as a “big tent” organization that welcomes all ideas, all points of view.

Why, then, are state GOP leaders rebuking some of the seven Republican U.S. senators who voted to convict Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection during the Senate trial that acquitted him of the allegations?

Sens. Richard Burr, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, Bill Cassidy and Ben Sasse have been censured by their states’ Republican Party. Sens. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins so far have avoided such a rebuke. So far!

Sen. John Thune has come to the defense of his GOP colleagues, chastising the state parties for their actions against the senators. He notes that the party prides itself on welcoming diverse opinions.

According to Newsweek: “There was a strong case made. People could come to different conclusions. If we’re going to criticize the media and the left for cancel culture, we can’t be doing that ourselves,” Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, told the Associated Press.

Republicans Hit Back at GOP Censures of Senators Who Voted to Convict Trump (msn.com)

There you go. Is the GOP a “big tent party” or not? If it is, then the tent appears to be collapsing over them.

This matter reminds me of the kind of thing you hear on university campuses when conservative thinkers are asked to give speeches to student bodies. How many times over the years have you heard about faculty senates and student council leaders demanding that their schools rescind the invitation because they don’t want to hear what the guest has to say.

I am compelled to ask when that rejection occurs: Aren’t colleges and universities supposed to welcome diversity of thought?

This intraparty squabble only exemplifies what many of us have thought for some time, that the GOP’s big tent is open only to those who adhere to a certain kind of thought, or are loyal only to certain individuals.