Tag Archives: White House

medical news, national news

‘We can’t control the virus’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Mark Meadows doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

He told CNN this weekend that “We can’t control” the pandemic that has killed 220,000 Americans and sickened millions more of us.

Really, Mr. White House Chief of Staff? We can’t control a virus that has been controlled quite effectively in nations all across the globe. Has he looked at what they have done in, say, Taiwan? Or Greece? Or Costa Rica? Those countries took the virus by the throat at the outset and have reported a fraction of the misery that has occurred in much of the rest of the world, including the United States.

Think of the idiocy that flew out of Meadows’s pie hole. We live in the nation with the world’s greatest researchers, the greatest medical technology, the most wherewithal to devote to fighting this disease. The White House chief of staff says we can’t control the virus?

What then does this say about the feel-good message that Donald J. Trump keeps offering. Doesn’t he say categorically that the pandemic is “under control”? Yep. He does. Oh, wait! The nation’s top politician doesn’t know what he’s talking about, either.

So here we are. We have an ignorant president saying we have a disease under control when we do not; we also have a White House chief of staff say we cannot gain control over a disease … when we damn well certainly could do so.

May we please banish this ignorance from the White House at the end of Election Day?

national news

Trump endangers his followers

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Certainly long after this election has gone by — perhaps even forever and ever — I will remain baffled by how Donald Trump continues to hold onto his support when he puts his ardent followers at extreme risk of catching a virus that could have killed him.

Trump once again today called a rally at the White House. Supporters were arrayed in front of the balcony from which he spoke. Trump himself might still be contaminated with the COVID-19 virus that hospitalized him for a few days this week; at least he had sense enough to stay away from the fans.

There they were, though. Clustered together. Many of them wore masks. Some of them didn’t. They cheered the Old Man’s lies and invective just like they always do.

And there he was, in all his campaign-rally glory, exhorting the troops to march on as if nothing has happened to change everyone’s life for well past the foreseeable future.

Joe Biden continues to enjoy a comfortable poll lead. Do I believe the former vice president will win this election going away? Hah! No. I don’t! My hope remains strong that he will be able to win by a comfortable enough margin to dispel any doubt that Trump vows to concoct that the election is somehow “rigged.”

How in the world does Trump manage to hold tightly to that 40 to 42 percent bloc of voters, some of whom get to stand in front of him in crowds that defy medical experts’ recommendations — and admonitions?

It’s a mystery. Perhaps I should just let that mystery stand and cease trying to attach a semblance of reason to the irrational.

national news

WH used as political prop

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Donald Trump pulled it off.

He managed to violate federal law, flout political custom and turn the White House — along with the Marines on duty at the presidential residence — into political props.

He accepted his party’s nomination to a second term as president. He had that crowd gathered on the lawn. They were generally mask free and they ignored social distancing recommendations. They cheered Trump’s applause lines.

Hey, it’s a given that Trump would lie through his teeth. Not much to say about that at this moment … likely later.

The use of the White House, the Marines, one of his daughters who serves as a government official is a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, the law that bans federal employees from engaging in political activities.

But … will it matter? Will there be an outrage by voters who have seen and heard enough from Trump? Probably not.

This misuse of the White House is galling at every level imaginable. The flags, the Trump-Pence campaign signs in front of our house. All of this while we are fighting a still-losing battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

We aren’t supposed to condone this kind of abuse. I certainly don’t. Donald Trump, though, doesn’t give a damn about any of this. He demonstrates his contempt for the law, for tradition and for time-honored political custom damn near daily.

He did so again with that hideous political spectacle at the White House. As a part-owner of that building, I object in the most strenuous terms possible!

national news

Recess context is appalling

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Surely I am not the only red-blooded American patriot who finds the current congressional recess appalling.

Why? Because of the job that the House and Senate have left undone before they shoved off on their lengthy time away from doing the people’s work.

Both legislative chambers — which are getting no help from the White House — have so far failed to provide relief for Americans caught in the pandemic vise. What makes this so terrible, so galling, so appalling is that while Americans are suffering from job loss, the loss of their medical coverage and possibly even their homes, members of Congress have jobs to which they will retain even while they are cavorting through their districts or perhaps jetting off on those infamous “junkets” to glamor spots around the world.

Do you get my drift here?

Americans are hurting because of the economic hardship brought to them by the pandemic. They depend on their elected representatives and, yes, even the president, to help them with assistance from a government that is assigned to look out for them and to provide for the “general welfare” of the public.

They are failing. Who pays the price? The public is paying grievously.

Let me be clear on this point: My wife and I are not among those who are suffering. We are retired from our careers and we live a quiet but comfortable life in Collin County, Texas. We don’t get out much, owing to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 viral pandemic.

Other Americans aren’t nearly as fortunate as we have been.

They are looking for unemployment compensation assistance. Republicans want to scale it way back; Democrats are fighting for more money.

Oh, and Donald Trump? He’s threatening to gut the U.S. Postal Service because he doesn’t want mail-in voting — believing it will hurt his re-election chances. The upshot is to stall any sort of legislation that would assist Americans in need of help from the government during this perilous time.

This is yet another example of disgraceful demagoguery.

Meanwhile, Congress is failing as well. House members and senators are leaving their constituents in the lurch while they take time away from doing their job.

Their job is to legislate.

Donald Trump

Why does he want this job?

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

I have been pondering something privately that I now want to share publicly. It is this: Why does Donald J. Trump want to keep doing a job I believe he hates doing? 

I long have believed that Trump accepted the notion in 2016 that he was going to lose the presidential election to Hillary Clinton. The polls had him trailing all the way to Election Day; it turned out he lost the actual vote, but won the Electoral College by a narrow margin … but you know all that.

I do not believe in my gut that Donald Trump likes going to work every day. I long have thought that he detests the notion of answering to Congress, or even to voters, you know, the folks who are actually in charge of matters involving government. He isn’t wired that way.

Trump spent his entire adult life being his own boss. He pushed people around and bullied them. He keeps doing it today. Trump doesn’t grasp the limitations of his office or understand why the framers wrote the Constitution the way they did, giving Congress and the judiciary equal doses of power.

Forgive the psychobabble, but it appears to me — sitting out here in Flyover Country — that Trump merely relishes being at the center of attention. Even when it casts him in hideously negative terms. It’s a form of masochism, I suppose. He doesn’t like being told he’s an a**hole, but getting that kind of negative bounce means he has our attention.

So now he wants another four years in the hottest seat on Earth. How come?

He can’t speak intelligently or with any nuance or detail about legislation. Trump doesn’t study. He doesn’t read. Trump admits to being bored with “presidential daily briefing” papers. Watch him read from prepared text and you well might get the sense — as I do — that he sounds like a prisoner of war being told to read a propaganda statement.

I am totally, completely and categorically prepared to give this guy the boot from my White House. He doesn’t like living in the place he once called a “dump” and he damn sure doesn’t like doing the job to which he was elected to do.

medical news

Shut … up, Mr. POTUS!

I cannot stand the sound of Donald J. Trump’s voice, or the sight of his face on my TV, which I know is no big flash to readers of this blog.

I especially cannot stand the sound and sight of him when he discusses things about which he knows nothing. Hmm. By my figuring, that’s just about anything under the sun.

So, when Donald Trump strides to the podium in the White House briefing room and declares that the coronavirus pandemic isn’t quite as serious as docs keep saying, or when he declares that wearing face masks is an overrated measure to fight the infection rate, I tend to want to pull my hair out by the roots.

Trump was in his usual bloviating form today when he dismissed mask-wearing and talked — yet again — about the benefits of that anti-malaria drug he keeps touting as a potential cure for the killer virus. You know, the drug that doctors and researchers say could kill you if ingest it.

My version of a perfect pandemic world would be for Donald Trump to stand down, to leave the communication solely to the doctors he enlisted ostensibly to conduct the federal government’s response to the pandemic. Then he steps all over their message, seeking to downplay the grim news they deliver, which is that we’re still not even halfway through the first round of infections.

What does it take to shut this guy up, to keep him off our TV screens, or to push him to the sidelines, leaving the real analysis of this crisis up to the experts who have all those MDs behind their name?

Oh, wait! I know! We have an election coming up in November! That’ll do it! Right?

national news

Fright is setting in

I don’t want to sound alarmist.

However, I am getting filled with astonishing feelings of fright at the prospect of a second presidential term with Donald John Trump sitting in the Oval Office.

I don’t scare easily, so this isn’t some sort of Chicken Little screed. The very notion that Donald Trump could actually win a second term is filling me with dread. It’s the real thing, man. I mean it!

Trump took office without a single moment of public service experience under his belt. His entire adult life was aimed at self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. He took that experience with him into the White House.

The man doesn’t possess an ounce of empathy or compassion. I mean, my goodness, he admits to preferring to trample over people than to hold them up.

Trump’s lack of public service experience has been coupled with his abject ignorance of the government over which he presides. He talks about enacting “bills” all by himself. Remember when he told the Republican convention in Cleveland that “I, alone” can solve the nation’s ills? He cannot. That hasn’t stopped him from continuing to imply such a moronic strategy.

We’re now well into the 2020 presidential campaign. I have not yet heard a single coherent statement that speaks to how he wants to govern during a second term. He continues to spend his entire re-election campaign effort at denigrating his Democratic foe, Joe Biden. Where’s the plan for governing, Donald? It ain’t there.

So are we going to expose ourselves to four more years of the kind of (non)leadership we’ve gotten during the past four years? Are we going to hand this president an invitation to do anything he thinks he can do without recrimination?

My goodness, we cannot allow this guy to send in federal “agents” to put down protests in our cities. We can’t allow him to “dominate the streets” with “heavily armed” troops. We cannot allow this individual to assault his foes using language that to my ears sounds overtly racist.

This clown snookered too many of us in 2016. A lot of us saw this disaster coming the moment he announced his candidacy at Trump Tower. I happen to one of those who now is frightened at the possibility that this guy could fool too many of us once again.

national news

Can’t make the leap to attach title to Trump’s name

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Well, here we are. We’re about 100 days away from the next presidential election.

My hope springs eternal that Americans will have learned from the big mistake they made when they elected Donald John Trump to the presidency and that we will elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to succeed him.

If that is the case, then I likely will be able to declare victory in one of my campaigns against Trump. It will be that I might have survived the current presidency without ever placing the word “President” in front of Trump’s name.

I cannot make that leap.

I won’t apologize for it. I have believed since long before Trump took the oath of office that he didn’t deserve to occupy it. He is unqualified. He is unfit at every level possible. I want him gone far away from the Oval Office inside “my White House.” Thus, it is time to evict this imposter and Election Day provides us with the best chance we will have.

I say all this with plenty of trepidation. I do not relish expressing this form of protest. Nor do I express it with an ounce of disrespect for the presidency. I revere the office. I merely detest the man who sits at the Resolute Desk. Thus, I take no pleasure in refusing to attach “President” in front of “Trump,” to publish those words consecutively, with nothing between them.

Members of my family will acknowledge that I have spoken those words in that order. I just cannot write them down, to put it on the record in this blog.

What will I do if Trump somehow wins a second term? The same thing. I just will need to suck it up for another four years. I might not have the stamina right now. If it comes to pass and we are stuck with this disgrace, I’ll find what it takes to continue my protest to the bitter end.

education news, medical news

What is White House hiding now?

The White House is playing a stupid game of keep-away with the U.S. Congress.

What it is keeping away from Congress happens to be information vital to the public — you know, the folks who pay the bills in Washington — on the best way to resume public education for our children.

The White House has decided to block Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Robert Redfield from testifying to the House Education and Labor Committee. The panel wants to know about the strategies being developed to allow schools to reopen eventually in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let me see. What might be the White House be fearing? Oh, might it fear that Redfield is going to say something that contradicts Donald J. Trump’s desire to reopen the schools this fall without little or no regard to the effects of the pandemic that still is raging across the country? That’s what it looks like to me. And to others, I should add.

According to CNN.com: “Dr. Redfield has testified on the Hill at least four times over the last three months. We need our doctors focused on the pandemic response,” a White House official said, confirming the decision to block the CDC’s participation in the hearing. But a spokesman for the House Education and Labor Committee said the panel had requested testimony from any CDC official, not necessarily Redfield.

The CDC is one of the go-to agencies in this fight against the pandemic. It seems to me that hearing from the head of this critical agency is, shall we say, critical to understanding what’s at stake and what the government is doing to protect our lives.

What in the name of government transparency are trying to hide within the West Wing?

national news

Trump anti-Obama pettiness continues to grow

This story doesn’t surprise me one little bit.

Donald Trump reportedly is refusing to unveil a portrait of Barack H. Obama in a White House ceremony, breaking a 42-year tradition dating back to the days of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

The ceremony has become part of the White House tradition of one president honoring the service of his immediate predecessor. Not this time.

President Carter started this tradition in 1978 when he invited former President Ford to the White House to unveil the portrait of the 38th president. Presidents Carter and Ford, even after their brutal and bruising campaign in 1976, became fast friends.

President Obama and his successor likely never will achieve anything even approaching civility.

Trump has accused Obama of illegal activities; he recently called him a “grossly incompetent” president; he has sought openly to dismantle any vestige of the Obama administration.

For his part, Obama has been largely quiet … until recently.

Now it’s Trump who will decline to unveil the portrait of his immediate predecessor in what looks like yet another disgraceful, disgusting and dispiriting example of petty petulance.

President Obama in 2012 welcomed his immediate predecessor, President Bush, to the White House for a portrait unveiling. These men are not political allies. However, they exhibit great respect for their service to the country.

If you watch this video, you’ll understand what I mean by referring to Donald Trump’s pettiness.