Tag Archives: 1/6

Vote theft = profound irony

The irony of what we are learning through dribs and drabs of Donald John Trump’s culpability in the 1/6 insurrection is just too profound to ignore.

What have we learned? That Trump actually sought to “overturn” the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to his own words. That he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to disallow Electoral College votes that went to Joe Biden while Pence was presiding over the electoral vote certification on 1/6. That he allegedly met with White House staff prior to the riot to plot how he could “legally” call for the seizure of voting machines.

The best part is that we have a clear recording of Trump demanding that Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, “find” 11,780 votes to swing the state from Biden’s corner to Trump’s. Voter theft? There it is!

And now think of this: Donald Trump’s Big Lie, that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him was being played out in real time by the then-president’s own effort to steal the election from the Biden, who won it fairly, squarely and legally.

Voter fraud? Vote theft? Trump alleges falsely that President Joe Biden’s team stole the election, all the while conspiring to do the same thing himself!

Wow, man!

The House 1/6 select committee is ramping up its probe into what occurred on that horrifying day. It is summoning key White House aides, including at least one member of Trump’s family — elder daughter Ivanka — to testify to what they knew and when they knew it. My creaky old bones are telling me that there could be some criminal indictments hurled by the committee in due course.

If so, then no one should be exempt. I shall repeat: No one should be exempt from the quest for the truth. That would include the man who masqueraded for four years as our head of state and commander in chief … the guy who sought to pilfer the election from the guy who won it honestly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This one is mind-blowing

Of all the revelations reported about the investigation into 1/6 and the circumstances that preceded the insurrection on that horrible day, none is more bizarre — to my way of thinking — than the report of fake electors being summoned to cast votes for the guy who lost the 2020 presidential election.

You know how it goes, right?

States that Joseph R. Biden won were being targeted by electors pledged to Donald J. Trump. They were being instructed to show up to cast their electoral votes for Trump. Yep, they would actually seek to reverse the results of a free and fair election and rig the result to suit the wishes of the guy who lost.

To think that Donald Trump is insisting that the results of the election were rigged against him. Good grief. He sought to actually rig the election in reverse!

So, the investigation into 1/6 proceeds.

The House select committee that is charged with finding the truth behind what happened is zeroing in on the principals involved in this elaborate plot to in effect stage a coup against the federal government.

They are issuing summons and making requests of people close to Trump to talk to committee members.

As I look at all these revelations, I sense a mountain of evidence building against former president of the United States. He clearly is an individual who would flout whatever law he could to keep a grip on power. Donald Trump’s lawlessness is unprecedented in an individual who took a sacred oath to uphold the law and defend the Constitution.

And still …

There are the cultists who insist the most recent presidential election is fraudulent; that their guy will be reinstated before the sun goes down; that they are the true “patriots”; that all the evidence we can see developing in real time is the result of “fake news.”

They conduct phony “audits” of statewide election returns and learn that Biden won by a handful more votes than originally reported.

They promote The Big Lie and their cultists believe it.

As for the phony electoral vote strategy that has been rooted out by the sleuths, I have to say it’s a doozy.

It also frightens the sh** out of me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

SCOTUS deals blow to ex-POTUS

Part of me wishes I could have been in whatever room Donald Trump was in when he got word that the Supreme Court had delivered a potentially fatal blow to his cover-up efforts relating to the 1/6 insurrection.

More to the point, that same part of me wishes I could have heard his response when he learned that all three justices he nominated for the court voted with the majority in squashing the effort.

You see, Donald Trump expects the judges he nominates to be loyal to him, not to the law or to the Constitution.

The court ruled 8 to 1 to require the National Archives to turn over records to the House committee examining the insurrection. The only dissent came from Justice Clarence Thomas. As for Trump’s nominees — Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — well, they stuck with the law.

That’s how it should be.

According to NPR.org: The court’s order paves the way for the release of records from the National Archives. The records could shed light on the events that led to the riot by Trump supporters protesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden.

The high court said lower courts had determined that Trump could not claim “executive privilege” in hiding those records.

“Because the Court of Appeals concluded that President Trump’s claims would have failed even if he were the incumbent, his status as a former President necessarily made no difference to the court’s decision,” the court said in its order.

Lifetime appointments to federal courts do have this way of freeing judges from a good bit of political pressure. That, too, is in keeping with what the founders had in mind when they wrote the Constitution. They were wise men.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Cheney seeks redemption?

Richard Bruce Cheney has done the virtually impossible; he has ingratiated himself to Democrats across the nation simply by doing something that damn few Republicans are able to do in this terrible, divided political climate.

The former vice president stood with his daughter, Rep. Liz Cheney, on the floor of the U.S. House this week and participated in a moment of silence to honor the brave men and women who fought with the 1/6 rioters.

Think for a moment about this. Dick Cheney once was considered the most loathsome politician in the nation, according to Democratic partisans. The VP in the George W. Bush administration was seen as the shadow architect of our foolish Iraq War. Indeed, he was thought by many critics to be a “shadow president” who called the shots in secret.

However, Dick Cheney today stands on the right side of history. He has condemned the disgraceful conduct of the current Republican congressional leadership and its handling of the 1/6 riot and its aftermath. He told reporters this week that Congress doesn’t “resemble the place” he knew during his service in the House before becoming defense secretary and then vice president.

I won’t forgive Cheney for what I consider to be some horrible decisions he made. However, I want to applaud the former vice president for participating with Democrats in a solemn ceremony to honor the police officers who fought to defend members of Congress and the Constitution of the United States.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

How does POTUS reach the other side?

President Biden today — and I shall borrow a phrase — was “preaching to the choir” when my wife and I tuned in to listen to his speech commemorating the year since 1/6.

We believe what he said about the cause of the riot on Capitol Hill; we endorse the notion that his presidential predecessor is more interested in “power than in principle”; we shudder at the belief that we witnessed a year ago the first direct assault on our democracy by those loyal to the individual who lost a free and fair election.

My question as I watched the president and Vice President Harris speak to us this morning was this: How in name of all that is sacred in our democracy do these officials reach those who need to understand the truth of what they are saying?

Those would be the cultists who continue to believe The Big Lie that the former POTUS keeps alive, that the 2020 election was stolen.

I simply want to highlight briefly something to which Biden alluded during his remarks given in Statuary Hall … that Republicans actually performed well down the ballot in November 2020 and that no one has challenged the results of those returns. Oh, no. Biden reminded us that the only challenge has come from the former president and his cultists regarding the race at the very top of the ballot. How come?

Oh, it’s because the former president lost that one and that his “bruised ego” won’t let him accept that he lost the most secure, most examined election in our nation’s history.

President Biden need not convince those of us who live in this North Texas home. He needs somehow to reach those who continue to believe The Big Lie.

I wish the president all the very best as he embarks on that effort.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

How much can we take?

How many more lies, more deception, more hypocrisy must we endure before we — as a nation — declare that enough is enough?

The 1/6 House select committee is set to go public with its testimony on the events that led to the riot that sought to overturn our democracy. The panel that comprises seven Democrats and two Republicans has heard from scores of witnesses in private; it has received thousands of pages of documents in private. It is now going to take it all into the open for the entire world to see and hear.

The nation is going to mark the first year of that horrendous event on Thursday. Capitol Police have been alerted to the possibility of violence. Oh, and who might erupt? That would be the followers of Donald Trump, the cultists who stormed the Capitol a year ago.

Where is the former Insurrectionist in Chief? Will he call for calm? Will he beseech his cultists to stand down? Hell no! He’ll be doing whatever he does all day in south Florida.

The lying continues to flow from the mouths of those who insist that Trump won the 2020 election. He didn’t. They say it was stolen from him. It wasn’t. They say that Joe Biden isn’t the duly elected president. He is. They insist they acted on 1/6 out of “love of country.” No, they didn’t; they acted out of hatred for the U.S. Constitution.

How much more of this trash must we endure? I am one American patriot who has heard all I can stomach from these traitors.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Liz Cheney gives him hell

Donald Trump deserves every single hit he should be receiving from his fellow Republicans. The only issue, though, is that so damn few of them are willing to say the things that came from U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney this morning.

What in the world is happening to me in this crazy political world? I am in a state of unadulterated admiration for a conservative Republican member of Congress who is speaking the unvarnished truth about a twice-impeached carnival barker who once masqueraded as a single-term president of the United States.

Cheney, one of two GOP members of the U.S. House committee examining the events of 1/6, said this among other things this morning: “He crossed lines no American president has ever crossed before,” she said in an interview with “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “When a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the coordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted.”

She also said that said Trump is “clearly unfit for future office [and] clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.”

The mob attacked Capitol Hill at Trump’s urging. Trump then said silently by, watching the mayhem overwhelm the Capitol building without ever telling the rioters to stand down, to go home, to cease the violence.

Holy crap, congresswoman!

As Trump weighs 2024 bid, top Republican calls him ‘clearly unfit for future office’ (msn.com)

She knows she is right. I know she is right. The crisis facing the Republican Party, though, is that most of its members believe Cheney is a loon and that Trump is a hero to some movement followers who adhere to that Deep State/QAnon/Big Lie horsepucky that keeps flowing from Trump’s overfed pie hole.

Cheney also said today that all 535 members of Congress — House members and senators — take the same oath of office, which is to “protect the Constitution” and follow the law. That oath, she said, makes no provision for following the dictates of a single individual.

If only others within her party would listen to the wisdom Liz Cheney delivers.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Speak up, Jim Jordan

Jim Jordan is the latest target of prime opportunity in the sights of the U.S. House select committee examining the events leading to the 1/6 insurrection.

The Ohio Republican U.S. representative cannot seem to get straight whether or when or how many times he talked to Donald Trump on that day. The House committee wants him to take an oath to tell the truth and then … tell the panel the truth about what happened that day. I mean, my hunch is that is probably knows what he said to Trump that day.

Jordan is likely to stonewall the committee, just like other Donald Trump loyalists have done. One of them is facing prosecution by the Justice Department; another is likely to face the same charge of contempt of Congress; still others have hidden behind the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, protecting them from saying something that would incriminate them.

Jordan is a loudmouth lawmaker. He has shown no bashfulness in proclaiming his loyalty to Trump. So, let’s hear it from the Ohio gasbag what he said to Trump on 1/6 and what Trump said to him in return.

We need to know all the details of that terrible day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Rep. Jordan turns too quiet

Jim Jordan owns arguably the loudest mouth in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Ohio Republican usually is unafraid to spout whatever lies pops into his vacuous noggin. The lies he spews usually involve Donald J. Trump and the so-called “phony” investigations into the myriad allegations often attached to the former POTUS.

Suddenly, though, the blowhard/liar/alleged traitor has fallen quiet. He won’t admit to sending Trump a message imploring him to call off the 1/6 rioters. But he did! He sent the POTUS a message that sought to get him to put a stop to the riot.

Why won’t Jordan tell us what he did? I think I know. Because it flies directly counter to the defense he has mounted on Trump’s behalf as evidence mounted in the waning days of his administration about the violence he provoked on the day of the Capitol Hill riot.

I have written already about the Republican cowards who populate the GOP caucus in Congress.

I have concluded that Jim Jordan is the king of the cowards.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

‘Fair and balanced’ now becomes ‘false and deceitful’

The hits just keep coming as they regard the Fox News Channel and the lies that continue to flow from a network that used to proclaim itself to be the “fair and balanced” presenter of news.

Wow! We hear now that Fox News personalities implored Donald J. Trump to stop the 1/6 insurrection. They emailed him, asked Don Jr. to tell Dad to make ’em stop rioting at Capitol Hill, urged White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to get Trump to intervene.

Trump did nothing. He didn’t heed the pleas of his own son, his own chief of staff or those of his favorite network talking heads.

A more serious aspect of this, though, are the lies that kept flowing from the pie holes of those same personalities. They told their viewers that the riot was not a big deal. That Trump was being vilified unfairly. That he didn’t incite anyone to “take back the government.”

The credibility — if you want to call it such — of the likes of Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro et al has been shattered into millions of pieces.

Unbelievable!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com