Tag Archives: Joe Biden

economic news, International news

Will sanctions hurt Putin?

Jimmy Carter usually opposes U.S. imposition of sanctions on other nations, believing that such action hurts innocent citizens of the countries we intend to punish. With all due respect to the former president, I am going to wish that sanctions we deliver to Russia when that nation goes to war with Ukraine deliver maximum pain to the country, but more importantly to its leader.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin today announced he recognizes two Ukrainian provinces as being “independent.” The decision prompted President Biden to levy limited sanctions involving those breakaway provinces. There will be more — much more — to come the moment Putin orders the tanks and troops to march in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

Biden is caught in a bit of a bind. There can be no way on Earth he can send U.S. troops into battle with the Russians, even though he has dispatched several thousand American forces to eastern Europe. The only option we have is to levy severe and punishing sanctions on Russia, which Biden pledges to do.

What do those sanctions look like? I suppose it would involve freezing of Russian assets in banks around the world, presuming President Biden has enlisted the support of our worldwide allies. They should involve the freezing of Putin’s personal assets. There well could be suspension of oil and natural gas shipments to western Europe from Russia, which would take a huge bite out of Russia’s third-world economy. There needs to be a suspension of technology exports to Russia from this country and from the European Union.

Will any of this dissuade Putin from carrying out his ambition to bring Ukraine back under Russian control? Probably not. He just needs to pay dearly for his adventurism.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Russians have pals … on the right!

OK, let me see if I have this correct. The Republican Party that once vilified Russians as being part of an Evil Empire, whose president once muttered into an open mic that he would launch missiles at the Soviet Union in “five minutes,” and who kept their grip on power by refusing to give the enemy any quarter is now in bed with the latest Russian dictator.

GOP members of Congress along with their friends in the right-wing media are criticizing President Biden’s actions against the Russians, contending that Ukraine is the real villain in the growing crisis in Europe.

Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush 41 are spinning in their graves at this moment.

We are hearing next to nothing from the right-wingers among us criticizing the actions of Vladimir Putin, who is threatening all-out war against Ukraine. The nut jobs on the right instead are criticizing the Democratic U.S. president for, um, threatening to levy stiff, punishing sanctions on Russians if they launch an invasion of Ukraine.

Those of us who remember the Cold War also remember a time when GOP politicians took great pride in standing firm against tyrants such as those who ruled the Soviet Union, which later returned to just being ol’ Russia after the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. Yes, some of expressed hope then that Russia would follow the model set by the United States and many nations in western Europe. Alas, it didn’t happen. We are dealing now with yet another strongman in the form of Putin, who has declared that the fall of the USSR was his country’s darkest historic moment.

What in the world am I missing here?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Still pulling for POTUS

No one who reads this blog regularly will be surprised to read that I want President Joe Biden to succeed as he trudges through his term in office. I hope it is just his first term … but that remains an open question, to be crystal clear.

I am not going to presume that the president will even seek a second term, let alone that he’ll win election to another four years in the White House.

He came into office promising to (a) end the pandemic, (b) restore the “soul of the nation” and (c) get our economy moving again. I am going to give the president credit for achieving one of those ambitious goals and part of another one.

The economy is stronger than many of us seem to believe it is. Polling suggests Americans remain concerned about the economic track we’re on. I am unclear as to why there remains such uncertainty and angst. I know about inflationary pressures; we’re feeling them in our North Texas home, too. The job numbers continue to sparkle, unemployment continues to decline and we’re buying more goods and services.

The national soul restoration remains a work in progress. Sadly, we’re still being infected with disinformation peddled by Biden’s immediate predecessor. The Big Lie still has legs, although most of its limbs have been cut off by the judicial system that keeps undercutting POTUS 45’s efforts to undermine the integrity of our electoral system. Biden, though, has sought to return the United States to its role as leader of alliances and protector of civil liberties around the world. He’s done well in that regard, dispensing with the gratuitous criticism of our allies.

Yes, the pandemic remains a problem. But its drag on our national psyche is dwindling right along with the infection rates, the hospitalizations and the deaths from COVID infection. States are relaxing their mandates on masks and other precautions. I am not heeding Texas’s relaxation efforts. We are still masking up and are still keeping our distance from those we do not know.

I am continuing to pull for President Biden to keep up the fight and to score more successes as he moves along through his term. You know already he wasn’t my first choice to defeat the man who held the office for four previous years. Then he became the Democratic Party nominee in 2020 … and I was all in.

I remain all in. Keep the faith, Mr. President.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Awaiting the SOTU

Let’s look ahead — shall we? — to President Biden’s first State of the Union speech. He’ll get to stand before a joint session of Congress and give them, and the nation, a report on the health and well-being of the nation he governs.

It is set for March 1.

These events have become sort of a handicapping exercise. Pundits will be offering views on how many members of Congress stand and applaud at the appropriate times.

Although I intend to watch the president deliver his speech, I am approaching that date with a bit of apprehension. We live in highly contentious times. Republicans seem to detest the Democratic president. Many members of the GOP congressional caucus, for instance, haven’t even accepted the fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Many of the nut jobs within the Republican caucus have made speeches endorsing Donald J. Trump’s Big Lie about the vote fraud that did not exist.

How will those idiots react to anything Biden says? How many of them will even attend the SOTU? Might we hear a “You lie!” insult coming from the GOP side the way we did when President Obama delivered an SOTU years ago?

I will approach this upcoming event with bit of trepidation. I hope Congress — men and women on both sides of the great divide — will treat President Biden with all due respect. Frankly, given the madness that seems to permeate the thick skulls of many within the GOP caucus, I do have some doubt over the kind of reception the president is going to receive.

Please, GOP members, prove my concerns to be without merit.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Waiting on an answer

Perhaps you have experienced as well a frustration I am about to express, which deals with a public official’s apparent refusal to provide a direct answer to a direct question.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has been running a re-election campaign ad in which he declares that he “distributed $3 billion” to buttress the state’s border security. Hegar, therefore, is taking direct credit for acting under his own discretion to spend the money to secure our border. The Republican officeholder, quite naturally, is critical of the nation’s top Democrat, President Biden, over federal border policies.

My question went to the head of the comptroller’s media relations office. I sent an email and the question is this: Does Comptroller Hegar have the discretion to distribute $3 billion for border security as he sees fit, which he implies in his campaign ad, or is that distribution mandated by the Legislature and/or the governor? The media guy has gotten two messages from me. No answer.

I don’t know why he hasn’t answered my question. I believe it is clear and concise. All he has to do is say “yes” or “no,” if he doesn’t want to spend any time explaining himself or the state agency’s policy.

My concern about Hegar’s ad is that it might be misleading. In fact, I believe it is misleading. You see, the Legislature appropriates money and then directs agency heads — even those elected to their office — to spend it according to what the legislation prescribes. So, when Glenn Hegar tells TV viewers that he “distributed” the money, he leaves the impression that he has sole authority to spend the money as he sees fit. It’s all part of the GOP narrative I keep hearing played out during this primary election season: Republican officials are doing the job that the feds are supposed to be doing; therefore, the message goes, Joe Biden is failing at his job. In fact, Hegar’s ad opens with that very statement, that “Biden is failing.”

Candidates for Texas attorney general are saying it, too, even though the AG is mainly a civil litigator. They’re all proclaiming how they’re going to get tough on criminals crossing the border into Texas “illegally,” of course, to do harm to helpless Texans who will fall victim to their criminal intent.

Well, I’ll be patient and wait this one out. I just find it hilarious that the guy who serves as the state’s top bean counter would portray himself as a tough-as-nails crime fighter.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Stand-down possible?

The more I think about a notion I floated the other day about the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the less goofy it is sounding to me as I roll it around my noggin.

I tossed the idea out there that President Biden might be inflating the imminent danger of a Russian invasion of Ukraine as a way to boost his sagging public opinion poll numbers. In other words, the door to a diplomatic solution might be closer than we are being led to believe it is.

Now we’re getting reports from Paris, Moscow, Kyiv and Washington that diplomatic pressure is mounting against Russian strongman/goon Vladimir Putin. The pressure is reiterating a message President Biden delivered to him during their hour-long phone conversation over this past weekend, that any attack by Russian armed forces against Ukraine would bring swift and destructive economic actions against the Russians.

Putin just might be listening to what he’s being told and — this is still a stretch, I know — might be willing to flinch at the thought of subjecting his people to untold economic suffering.

Putin is a former spy. He also is now a politician. Putin must know that a politician cannot subject his constituents to avoidable misery.

We have plenty of diplomatic leverage we can use against the Russian thug.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Is war coming … really?

You might think I am nuttier than a Payday bar for what I am about to say, but I don’t care. I’m just thinking out loud about what might be occurring behind closed doors in the White House and the Kremlin.

My thought is this: Is it possible that President Biden is overstating the threat of war between Russia and Ukraine to purchase some more negotiating time with Vladimir Putin? Furthermore, would an agreement that Putin’s armed forces are “standing down” give the president a serious public-relations bump at a time when he needs it?

We all know that politicians try to play every angle at their disposal. I don’t doubt for a second that Joe Biden is capable of playing such an angle for his benefit.

I also believe the president when his White House flack machine tells us the crux of what he told Putin in that hour-long phone call on Saturday, that the United States is prepared to inflict immediate and lasting economic harm to Russia if Putin sends in the troops to invade Ukraine. I also have difficulty accepting that Vladimir Putin is willing to accept that damage as the price of a battlefield conquest.

OK, call me nuts. I’m a big boy and I can take it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, International news, Joe Biden, medical news

Mr. POTUS, tell Putin …

Joe Biden doesn’t need little ol’ me to give him advice as he talks to Vlad Putin, but I will offer it anyway and will make sure I send it to the appropriate place where someone on his staff might see it.

Mr. President, you need to remind Putin — as if he needs reminding — that he presides over a country with a third-rate economy. It is not a First World economic system. It is Third World at best, relying on oil and natural gas to keep it fueled.

Tell your colleague, Mr. President, that economic sanctions of the type we are able to level on Russia will bring great pain to himself and to the people he governs. We can cut off the oil and natural gas shipments to western Europe, which you have threatened to do if he invades Ukraine. We can freeze Russian monetary assets in banks in this country and we can persuade our NATO allies to do the same.

Also, the president ought to remind Putin of the terrible military cost his armed forces will suffer if they take on Ukrainian forces. Ukraine is not defenseless against the Russians. The Russians can win a ground war if they launch a full-scale invasion, but it will come at considerable cost.

And if Putin is interested in gathering up what’s left of Ukraine and annexing it into the Russian federation, he will do inherit a population that hates his ever-lovin’ guts.

The cost of an invasion — no matter its scale — is too great for the Russians to bear. Putin knows this. He just needs a not-so-gentle reminder from the leader of the world’s remaining military superpower.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, military news

Biden needs an RFK

Who functions in the Joe Biden administration as the tough guy in international negotiations? Who can President Biden rely on to get the message delivered in clear and unambiguous terms that the United States means business when it threatens the other side with severe punishment if talks break down?

I refer to someone such as Robert F. Kennedy, who filled that role for his brother, President John F. Kennedy, during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The situation today isn’t precisely identical, but to my eyes and ears it reminds me a bit of what transpired in 1962. Russian troops are massing on the Russian border with Ukraine. Russian thug Vladimir Putin is threatening to invade Ukraine if certain conditions are not met. President Biden is trying to talk Putin off the proverbial ledge.

In October 1962, the Soviet Union began assembling missile sites in Cuba. JFK got wind of it and set out to talk Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev out of deploying the missiles that could hit U.S. cities. He ordered a blockade of Cuba, using U.S. Navy ships to turn back any vessels heading for Cuban ports. He then dispatched his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to negotiate with the USSR envoys at the United Nations.

RFK laid down the law: either dismantle the missile sites or face the mighty wrath of American military might. The Soviets backed down. We gave them some concessions, to be sure, such as taking down our own missile sites in Turkey. The point is that JFK had RFK to do his dirty work.

Is there someone in the Biden administration to fill that task now? Man, I hope so.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, local news, national news

POTUS is up to the job

I am running out of ways to say what I believe in the deepest regions of my gut, which is that those who suggest that President Biden doesn’t have what it takes to do the job just aren’t paying attention, they aren’t listening to his words or watching how he interacts with other heads of state and political leaders here at home.

And yet …

I keep hearing from some of my own critics that Biden has lost a step. That he needs what Congressman Ronny Jackson of Amarillo keeps insisting is a “cognitive test.” That he lacks the mental acuity to figure out the myriad problems that plague the nation.

Good grief! Give me a fu**ing break!

The president is sharp enough to do the job. He remains engaged in the political process. He continues to remind us that he’s on top of matters. And, yes, the man can string sentences together and can communicate in a way that makes sense … at least he does to me.

Now, to be sure I have been accused myself of being a little slow on the uptake. One critic recently said I am “naive” to think that the inflated cost of goods and services are dragging down the president’s poll numbers; he said many factors have contributed to Biden’s polling decline, that he cannot do the job.

Please. Stop this nonsense.

Is the president a flawless orator? Do the words flow like fast-moving stream from his mouth? No. They don’t. Remember this about Joseph R. Biden Jr.: He grew up fighting a debilitating stutter. He conquered it through tough persistence and patience. Anyone who has suffered through such a challenge can relapse on occasion.

Believe me when I say such a thing, because I know how that happens; it happens to me on occasion. I, too, suffered through some speech issues as a boy. I can get rattled when speaking in public. When that happens, the words at times do not flow freely.

Is the president of the United States immune from the occasional lapse? Of course not!

And if we’re going to compare how this president communicates with, say, his immediate predecessor, I encourage anyone to read the text of Biden’s unrehearsed comments and compare them with what rolls out of Donald Trump’s mouth.

President Joe Biden has all the snap he needs to do the job to which he was elected.

Case closed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com