Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Standing with POTUS

First of all, I want to stipulate that I am not a fair-weather fan of President Biden.

Yes, I read the polling data. I am acutely aware that his approval rating among American voters has slipped badly since about the time of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Inflation has harmed the presidentā€™s standing. We cannot seem to shake the pandemic and we cannot declare our ā€œindependenceā€ from the disease, which Biden projected we could do by the Fourth of July.

However, I voted for Joe Biden with as much enthusiasm as I have had for any presidential candidate for whom I have voted since 1972, when I cast my first vote for the leader of the Free World.

The manā€™s current difficulty will not force me to turn against him. I stand with him.

We are on the verge of receiving a big legislative push if Congress gets around to approving the Build Back Better package that President Bidenā€™s team presented some months ago. Congress already has approved the infrastructure bill designed to repair our nationā€™s roads, bridges, airports, seaports and Internet availability. That is no small deal, man.

The economy is continuing to rebound from its pandemic low. Do I worry about inflation? Yes, I do! Am I a huge fan of Bidenā€™s decision to pull oil out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve? Not really. I donā€™t consider the SPR to be an inflation-fighting weapon; I consider it to be a safety net in the event of a severe shortage of fossil fuel. If the SPR flow helps stem the rising price of that fuel, then I suppose I can grit my teeth and back it.

Biden is committed to fighting climate change, which is a welcome change from the previous administrationā€™s decision to turn its back on those efforts.

My support of President Biden is unflinching even in the face of crises. We elect someone to handle these issues as they arise. He has assembled a competent team of political pros and assorted experts. I am going to stand with them as they grapple with these crises.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

SCOTUS to get kicked around?

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Mitch McConnell has demonstrated a clear ability — and a tendency — to play hardball politics whenever the need arises in his own pointed head.

Think about how the Senate Republican leader can manipulate things in the event the GOP takes control of the U.S. Senate after the 2022 midterm election.

Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer might retire from the court. Say, he does so at the end of the current term, which arrives in late June or early July 2022. President Biden has to select a nominee immediately after such a retirement occurs. McConnell well might decide to throw up roadblocks anticipating a GOP takeover of the Senate in November 2022.

What might occur, then, if the GOP wins a Senate majority, seats a new Senate in January 2023 and Biden’s SCOTUS nominee still hasn’t had a hearing, let alone a vote? I’ll tell you what’ll happen. The GOP-led Senate could scuttle a Biden choice and then McConnell could decide to replay the tactic he used in 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly. President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the court, but McConnell torpedoed the nomination, refusing to grant Garland a hearing. Why? Because we had an election months away and McConnell said the next president deserved the right to select someone. The next president happened to be Donald J. Trump and, well, you know the rest of it.

This all seems to give a Breyer decision on whether he stays on the court a good bit more of a time urgency. I don’t expect Justice Breyer to act on the wishes of others around him. He is entitled to walk away on his own terms and on his own schedule.

The nation’s highest court, though, does not need or deserve to be kicked around like the political football some in the Senate have made it out to be.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news, national news

Vote ‘no’ and take the dough

I should direct these comments to the Republicans who comprise the Texas congressional delegation.

All of ’em, to a person, voted “no” on President Biden’s infrastructure proposal and on the $1.7 trillion package billed as Build Back Better.

Some of them have issued harsh policy statements criticizing Biden as well as their Democratic colleagues, calling them “socialists” and “spendthrift” liberals who don’t give a damn about the national debt.

Ah, yes. But … will they say “no” when the government starts parceling the money to their states or congressional districts? Hardly!

Indeed, I fully expect some of them to actually use these improvements as grist for their re-election efforts in 2022 and beyond. Will they realize or recognize the hypocrisy of that message? Not even, man!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

political news

GOP takeover doesn’t necessarily doom Democrats

As I watch the political landscape take shape heading into the 2022 midterm election, I cannot help but think of what happened in 2010.

What’s that, you ask? Here’s what happened.

President Barack Obama took office in 2009 and got to work repairing the economic free-fall that was occurring while getting Congress to approve the Affordable Care Act.

Congress spent a ton of money to fix the economy and it approved the ACA by a narrow margin. The 2010 midterm election loomed. Republicans were loaded for bear. They delivered what Obama said was a “shellacking” by taking control of the House of Representatives.

President Obama wasn’t disheartened. He ran for re-election in 2012 and with the wind blowing in his face, he defeated Mitt Romney by a comfortable margin.

Obama’s approval rating wasn’t ever all that great. Yet he served two successful terms as POTUS.

Now comes President Biden facing the wrath of voters. The GOP might be poised to deliver another pounding to the president and his party next year. Does that mean the end of the Biden presidency? Does it deliver a mortal wound to his agenda? Does it set the stage for a Republican victory in 2024? No, no and no!

I will hold out hope that the GOP in its current configuration — the party has turned into a cabal of cultists — will turn off enough voters to forestall any more coup attempts such as the one launched by the most recent Republican POTUS.

Let us hope for the best … shall we?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

VPOTUS fighting back

Vice President Kamala Harris has been for years an inviting target for right-wing pundits and politicians.

So it comes as no surprise to yours truly that she now is being separated from the rest of the Biden administration and singled out for criticism that she is “underutilized,” that her office is in disarray and is dysfunctional and that President Biden is ignoring her best advice.

Hmm. Do you think perhaps there is some rumbling and grumbling out there that she might become the Democrats’ next best hope for the presidency? That perhaps she might seek to succeed President Biden if the incumbent decides to leave office after a single term?

Harris is answering the critics. She contends that all the tittering and chatter is just that and that she is a functioning member of the Biden team.

I get that some of the reporting on alleged discontent comes from mainstream media outlets, such as CNN and Politico. The reporting does feed, though, into the right-wing distortion machine that inflates any negative-sounding report into something unrecognizable.

President Biden has said he intends to run for re-election next time. I dislike the word “intend,” as it leaves too much for room for someone to change his or her mind. If he does, then my hope would be that he wins re-election in 2024.

If not, I believe the president has a fully capable partner in Vice President Harris. If only she could stop the rumor mill from grinding her to pieces.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Not your call, Okie National Guard

Let’s look briefly at an astonishing defiance of the commander in chief, OK?

The Oklahoma National Guard command has declared that its soldiers do not have to adhere to Defense Department requirements for vaccination against the COVID-19 virus.

This is a seriously wrong-headed call.

The National Guard is part of the U.S. military apparatus. Thus, it is under the command of — here it comes — the commander in chief, the president of the United States of America. The current commander in chief, President Biden, has declared that members of the military are required to be vaccinated against the virus, unless they have a valid military of religious exemption.

The commander in chief, therefore, has issued a lawful order. Those who serve the commander in chief are obligated under military law to obey such orders or else face the consequences.

The Oklahoma National Guard, accordingly, is seeking to disobey that lawful order.

It won’t work.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

‘Let’s go, Brandon’ explained

I guess I need to get out more.

This morning I awoke and while catching up on some overnight developments, I found the “Let’s go, Brandon” slogan plastered on several items. I looked up the origin of this phrase I’ve been seeing. I found this on Yahoo news:

Republican Rep. Bill Posey of Florida ended an Oct. 21 House floor speech with a fist pump and cryptically let out the phrase that’s disguised to be upbeat. A day later, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas tweeted the phrase. More recently, Southwest Airlines opened an internal investigation when a pilot used it over the loudspeaker.

The phraseĀ originated at an Oct. 2Ā NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver, had won his first Xfinity Series and was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter. The crowd behind him was chanting something at first difficult to make out. The reporter suggested they were chanting ā€œLetā€™s go, Brandonā€ to cheer the driver. But it was clear they were saying, ā€œ(Expletive) Joe Biden.”

What does ā€˜Letā€™s Go Brandonā€™ mean? Everything you need to know about the Joe Biden insult (yahoo.com)

So now it has become a sort of right-wing rallying cry. Social media have carried it around the world, maybe even into outer space.

Again, as with the term “woke” — which still kinda flies over my noggin — I need to understand some of these trendy sayings that grow legs and traipse their way into contemporary public discourse.

I’m not sure how to use the “Let’s go, Brandon” phrase. Is it an epithet? Do I say it when I want to denigrate a liberal/progressive policy? Do I hurl it at President Biden?

I’ll just stick with what I know.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Brickbats go with the bouquets

The Financial Times believes President Biden must understand he needs to take responsibility for the inflation that has plaguing the nation.

The London-based publication wrote this: Biden has promised to ā€œbuild back betterā€ after the coronavirus pandemic. His big spending has already helped to deliver a historic recovery, with US national income back at a level above its pre-pandemic peak. The challenge will now become harder: to demonstrate he can deliver higher living standards without jeopardising his pledge to tackle climate change.

The Financial Times notes as well that President Carter will be marked indelibly by the inflation that consumed his single term in office. Yes, there was that and the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81. The Times is correct, though, to project that Biden faces potential defeat in 2024 if he doesn’t sidle up to the issue now before it gets totally out of control.

I am not sure how much of the inflation issue is a direct result of presidential policies. He did inherit that pandemic and the “supply chain” crisis that has developed while the nation seeks to subvert the coronavirus.

It’s happening on President Biden’s watch. He cannot forestall a solution simply by blaming his predecessor.

Let’s get busy, Mr. President.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

What happened to Congress’s better angels?

There once was a time when we expected our elected leaders to represent the very best in us, yes?

What, then, has become of that standard in the halls of our Congress?

A Republican member of the House, Paul Gosar of Arizona, could be censured by his Democratic colleagues for posting an animation depicting him killing Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Biden. Has there been any recrimination coming from the Republican side of the great divide? Has any of the GOP leadership scolded Gosar publicly for posting such a hideous depiction? No. Nothin’, man.

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy has said nothing. Nor has any of the leadership team surrounding him.

Gosar could be censured. That means he will have to stand in the well of the House and listen toĀ  his colleagues excoriate him. The critics are likely to be Democrats only. But his conduct casts shame on the entire House of Representatives, which contains a significant number of Republicans as well.

The better angels of our elected House have gone silent.

What a horrible shame on them!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden

Biden term tainted unfairly

Try as I am with my little olā€™ blog platform to set the record straight about the 2020 presidential election, I am wracked with fear that President Biden is going to be tainted unfairly over his election one year ago.

It is this idiotic notion that the presidential election is somehow corrupt, that Biden didnā€™t actually defeat Donald Trump.

Holy crap, man! He won! Biden collected 7 million more votes than Trump! He captured the Electoral College by the same ā€œlandslideā€ that Trump described as he won four years earlier against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Trump had hired an acknowledged expert at securing elections prior to the 2020 election. The expert, Christopher Krebs, managed to wipe out any doubt over the integrity of the balloting. They counted the votes; Biden got more of them than Trump and then Krebs declared the 2020 election was the ā€œmost secureā€ in U.S. history. Trump went ballistic.

The cultists who follow Trump seem wedded to The Big Lie that the former POTUS is fomenting. The newly indicted former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said 42% percent of Americans believe the election was corrupt. I donā€™t necessarily accept Bannonā€™s figures. Still, there seems to be a solid body of Americans who have swilled the Kool-Aid served up by the Trump cult of personality.

What does this mean for President Biden? It means, as I see it, that Biden will be dogged at least through his current term by this ridiculous trash talk being offered by the man he defeated in 2020. It is nothing more than trash. Garbage. It needs to be flushed away.

If the former POTUS had a shred of decency, or any love of country, or any sense of doing the right thing, he would have conceded the election a year ago. He would have called the new president, wished him well, offered his support and then skulked into the darkness. He would have gone about pursuing whatever it is he intends to pursue in his post-presidential years.

But,Ā oh no-o-o-o!Ā That ainā€™t Trumpā€™sĀ modus operandi.

He has behaved disgracefully every day since he left the White House the day before President Biden took his oath of office.

So help me Iā€™ll keep trying to persuade others of what I know to be true: Joe Bidenā€™s election as the 46th POTUS is on the up-and-up. He won fair and square and President Biden deserves to be free of the taint that is staining his term in office.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com