Tag Archives: Joe Biden

International news

Biden ‘speaks his mind’?

Michael Kinsley, the liberal columnist and one-time TV commentator, once famously quipped that a “gaffe” occurs when a politician “speaks his mind.”

So it is, then, that President Biden well might have been speaking his own mind when during a speech in Poland he said that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”

Oops, Mr. President. You’ve just spoken against U.S. policy, which supposedly forbids any effort to bring about “regime change” in a foreign government. Oh, but wait! Didn’t we do that when we went to war in Afghanistan after 9/11 and then went to war in Iraq less than two years later while hunting down Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein?

Both those efforts resulted in regime change. The Taliban, though, are back in power in Afghanistan; Saddam Hussein is dead, having been hanged for his crimes against humanity.

The White House is trying to take back what President Biden said, that our aim isn’t to remove Putin from office even as we condemn him for launching his illegal, immoral and illogical invasion of Ukraine.

I am not going to sweat much about what the president said. He was telling us what he thinks ought to happen, not necessarily predicting that it will happen.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Biden shows ‘temper’?

Can the Russian media flacks say anything more ridiculous than what they have declared about President Biden’s comments today about thug/despot/tyrant Vladimir Putin?

The Kremlin issued a statement in which it criticized the president for flashing a “temper.” Why? Because Joe Biden called Putin precisely what he is: a butcher.

President Biden is choosing to avoid mincing words as he travels through Europe. For the record, he also declared that Putin shouldn’t be allowed to continue ruling Russia; the president in effect called for “regime change” in Moscow.

To be clear, the president of the United States is not about to launch a coup attempt against Putin. However, the U.S. president clearly is pissed off at the conduct of the Russian dictator over the Russians’ unprovoked attack and invasion of Ukraine.

Joe Biden reportedly wants Russia kicked out of the G-20 international group aimed at fostering economic cooperation among the world’s wealthiest nations. That reportedly will be a difficult mission to accomplish, according to media reports. However, it is becoming clearer by the hour that Vladimir Putin has isolated himself from most of the rest of the world … by “butchering” innocent civilians through indiscriminate bombing and artillery attacks on soft targets in Ukraine.

That the U.S. president would call him a “butcher” is not a sign of a lost temper. It is a clear signal of President Biden’s realistic view of Vladimir Putin.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS fight could get more toxic

So, you might think the fight over whether to approve President Biden’s selection of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court is as toxic as it gets. Guess again.

You see, Jackson’s addition to the court doesn’t change the ideological balance on the body. It remains a 6-3 conservative majority court. Yet, Senate Republicans have chosen to demonize her in ways that I find repugnant.

The fecal matter will really hit the fan if this president gets to select a court nominee to replace one of the conservative justices serving on the nation’s highest court. Yes, I have Justice Clarence Thomas — one of the right wing’s favorite judges — in mind as I suggest that.

Just suppose Justice Thomas resigns as the heat comes to a full boil over his wife’s far-right-wing political activism. Suppose that Biden gets to select a nominee to succeed Thomas. Whoever the president chooses will be of a more liberal/progressive slant. Correct?

Senate Republicans will go ballistic, just as they did in 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died and President Obama sought to replace him with a moderate judge named Merrick Garland.

All of this is my way of condemning the toxicity that infects every single decision these days in Washington, D.C., a place that once sought to pride itself on bipartisan collegiality.

It now relishes its new role as a snake pit. I am not predicting any of this will occur. I merely am preparing everyone for the bloodbath that could occur if it does.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Resign, Justice Thomas!

All right, enough is enough! I have seen and heard all I need to see and hear about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s obvious conflicts of interest involving Donald J. Trump, his own wife Ginni and The Big Lie that Trump has pitched contending there was “widespread voter fraud” during the 2020 presidential election.

Justice Thomas needs to resign from the Supreme Court if only to enable his wife to continue her political activism and to avoid further damaging the integrity of the court on which he has served for more than three decades.

Go home, Mr. Justice!

I say this without any reservation. It is clear to me that Ginni Thomas’s activism has compromised her husband’s role as a supposed “impartial” arbiter of cases that come before the court. Some of them have involved The Donald’s preposterous claims of executive privilege. Justice Thomas, I need to remind everyone, was the lone dissenting vote against The Donald’s claim of executive privilege as he sought to prevent the National Archives from handing over presidential documents to the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection/riot. Why is that significant? Because Ginni Thomas attended the damn rally on The Ellipse on that day, but left before it got totally out of hand.

Now we hear from credible media reports that Ginni Thomas pushed, prodded and pressured White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to do all he could to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which The Donald lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

She did all this and then went home at night to the same residence she shares with an associate Supreme Court justice. How in the name of juris prudence can this be dismissed? How is that not a direct conflict of interest? How does Justice Thomas explain his ghastly vote to grant executive privilege to Trump when every lower court has ruled against it — along with all eight of his SCOTUS colleagues?

I have had enough of this charade being perpetrated on Americans by the most senior member of the nation’s highest court.

Get the hell out of office, Justice Thomas!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Enter the Three Stooges

It is tempting, I suppose, to attach some sort of label to three U.S. senators who “distinguished” themselves with their pitiful performances at the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson, selected by President Biden to join the Supreme Court.

Three Amigos? Nah! Three Musketeers? Nope.

How about … Three Stooges? Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley all were disgraceful in their own respective ways as they sought to tear down a distinguished jurist’s record by ascribing all sorts of phony nefarious motives to decisions she made from the bench and in practice as a public defender.

They all sickened me. Yes, I am on record as wanting Judge Jackson to take her place on the nation’s highest court. I also am on record as loathing the way Republican senators reacted initially to President Biden’s selection of Judge Jackson and then to the way they behaved during the confirmation hearing.

I will hold out a sliver of hope that some GOP senators — maybe two of ’em — will see fit to confirm her when the full Senate casts its vote.

As for the Three Stooges — two of whom (Hawley and Cruz) apparently want to run for POTUS in 2024 — I just will be content to scoff at their antics and to hope eventually they all get booted out of the Senate. I don’t want any of them voting on laws that affect my family and me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

The system is broken

This is no great flash, but I feel obligated to say it anyway: The confirmation hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson shows that the U.S. political system is broken and it needs immediate urgent care.

What also is not exactly news is that the system has been broken for too long and it has needed repair for as long as we have witnessed the system’s fraying.

Judge Jackson wants to join the U.S. Supreme Court, succeeding the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. She is eminently qualified and she deserves to take her place with the rest of the court.

She will get there, or so it appears. Democrats have enough Senate votes to confirm her. The Senate Democratic caucus likely will hold together to confirm this excellent nominee. Indeed, when a president exercises the prerogative given by the public that elected him, it falls on the president to find the most qualified nominee for this critical post. President Biden has delivered the goods by nominating Judge Jackson.

Senate Republicans, though, have spent the past two days dredging up phony excuses to oppose Jackson’s nomination. Their scurrilous misrepresentation of Jackson’s stellar record only demonstrates the broken political system that needs repair.

I long have adhered to the notion that presidential prerogative should grant presidents the right to make recommendations to these critical posts, even lifetime jobs to the federal judiciary. Yes, the Senate has the right granted by the Constitution to offer “advice and consent” on nominees. However, Judge Jackson’s nomination has been twisted and perverted into a form that needs to be straightened out.

The system that has created the great partisan divide in Congress is the culprit. Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves far better than what she endured.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Graham just pisses me off

OK, I gotta get this off my chest: There is just something about Sen. Lindsey Graham that pisses me off. The South Carolina Republican demonstrated his petulance once again while questioning a highly qualified nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Graham cannot get past the notion that President Biden — the man he once hailed as one of his best friends in public life — selected Judge Jackson over the woman Graham preferred, fellow South Carolinian Judge Michelle Childs.

His pique was on full display yet again today as he interrupted Judge Jackson as she sought to answer his questions. He refused to let her complete answering a question about sentencing practices and insisted on directing the line of questioning to sex offenders; Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin interceded to allow Jackson to finish her answer.

Graham insists he hasn’t decided how he will vote on Judge Jackson’s nomination. That, of course, is nonsense. He is going to vote against Jackson’s nomination, joining most — if not all — of the Republican Senate caucus in opposing her selection to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer. I can make that determination, as can anyone with half a brain in their noggin.

I just am flabbergasted at the rudeness he has exhibited while questioning a superb choice to join the nation’s highest court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin: ‘war criminal’

Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin are not going to exchange Christmas cards this year, or probably for as long as either of them is alive.

The president of the United States has accused the Russian thug/strongman/despot/dictator of being a “war criminal” on the basis of his armed forces’ indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine.

Yep. Vladimir Putin fits the description that President Biden has hung around his neck.

The man has committed crimes against humanity. He has killed children in his effort to pummel Ukraine into submission. Putin’s artillery and air force have bombed schools, a maternity hospital, churches, shopping malls, apartment complexes. These all are places where children hide to get away from the carnage that is befallen them.

Donald Trump once proclaimed his desire to make nice with Putin and with Russia. The Russians led by Putin have destroyed any possible warming of relations with the United States, not to mention with the rest of the world through their unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation.

For his part, Joe Biden is punishing Putin with economic sanctions that threaten to relegate Russia to Third World status. Keep applying the pressure, Mr. President.

Oh, and be sure you take Vladimir Putin off your Christmas card list.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Now, for the inquisition

Ketanji Brown Jackson promised to “uphold and defend the Constitution” if she is confirmed to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course, that’s what they all say.

In her case, I believe her. I believe that President Biden’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer is a woman of her word. She oozes integrity and decorum.

However, none of this is likely to curb the criticism of her record that is sure to come from Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans who will look for any reason — even made-up reasons — to oppose her confirmation to the nation’s highest court.

Judge Jackson, who has appeared before the Senate panel already while being confirmed to lower court posts, is a history-making jurist. She is the first African American woman ever nominated to the high court; Biden pledged to find a highly qualified Black woman to sit on the court. He delivered big time!

I believe she will be confirmed. It will be a bloodbath, more than likely. Then again, that’s become the norm for virtually every Supreme Court nominee since the early 2000s.

Yes, Judge Jackson will uphold and defend the Constitution. She knows the lines she cannot cross.

The judge will make a stellar SCOTUS justice.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

‘Well-qualified,’ says ABA

The American Bar Association has given its official blessing to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s appointment to take her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ABA calls the judge “well-qualified” to sit on the nation’s highest court and interpret the U.S. Constitution’s role in pending cases.

Now, is that it? Does that end the debate that is sure to erupt when Judge Jackson starts answering questions from the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which begins confirmation hearings on Monday?

Hah! Not even close!

To be fair, I should point out that all three of Donald Trump’s nominees to the court received well-qualified ratings from the ABA. That didn’t stop the fierce debate that accompanied their eventual confirmations.

American Bar Assoc Says Judge Jackson ‘Well Qualified’ to Serve on SCOTUS (msn.com)

President Biden’s selection of Ketanji Brown Jackson brings a historic significance that the three previous picks lacked. Judge Jackson is the first African American woman to be nominated. Joe Biden pledged during the 2020 presidential campaign to find a highly qualified Black woman to serve … and he delivered on that pledge in a big way by nominating Judge Jackson.

Her sparkling credentials and the ABA’s highest blessing won’t stop Republican senators from looking for reasons to oppose her. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for instance, castigated her for going soft on child molesters. Hawley, though, needs to re-read the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that all criminal defendants are entitled to legal counsel; Jackson served as a public defender for a time before becoming a judge, thus, she was doing what the Constitution requires.

I look forward to the Senate confirmation hearing and am hopeful — although I know it’s a stretch — that a significant number of Senate Republicans will realize that she deserves to join the rest of the Supreme Court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com