Tag Archives: Joe Biden

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 phrase originated at an Oct. 2 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 “Let’s go, Brandon” to cheer the driver. But it was clear they were saying, “(Expletive) Joe Biden.”

What does ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ 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 “build back better” 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 to  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 ol’ 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 didn’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 “landslide” 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 “most secure” 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 don’t necessarily accept Bannon’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, oh no-o-o-o! That ain’t Trump’s 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 I’ll keep trying to persuade others of what I know to be true: Joe Biden’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

national news

Eve of destruction? Hardly!

I see these social media posts and I shake my noggin.

“Joe Biden is destroying the country,” they say. Oh really? How in the world can anyone presume that we’re being “destroyed” when we have endured what we went through for the past four years prior to Biden become president?

While we’re at it, how did the country survive the turmoil of the 1960s, with the Vietnam War raging and protesters lighting fires in our cities? Or when we suffered through political assassination, starting with the murder of a president, then with the gunning down of a preacher and civil-rights champion and then the brother of the president who well could have become POTUS on his own?

Or how about during the Second World War, or the Civil War?

Yeah, we’ve been through a lot in this country. We have been on the verge of destruction many times already. We have managed to come out on the other side. Perhaps a bit tattered, battered and bruised.

Joe Biden is “destroying the country” because he wants to invest in some social programs? Please … spare me the hyperbole.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

environmental news

POTUS reverses predecessor’s denial

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Joe Biden sees climate change as an existential threat to the nation and the world.

Donald Trump called it, among other things, a “hoax,” a figment of the “fake media” and its obsession with leftist policies.

Biden is correct. His predecessor is wrong. Biden was correct to return the United States to the Paris Climate Accord; Trump was wrong to pull us out the accords in 2017.

Which is why many of us are applauding President Biden’s decision to return to the climate change negotiating table and to hammer out potential solutions to what the scientific community has concluded: that humankind’s contribution to the changing world climate compels it to seek solutions.

Biden selected former Secretary of State John Kerry to serve as the administration’s spokesman on climate change issues. He brought Kerry with him to Glasgow to talk with other world leaders about the United States’ potential role in seeking answers to the crisis.

Indeed, Kerry is no novice at this level of international diplomacy. He served for four years as chief diplomat during the Obama administration. Prior to that he served in the U.S. Senate, ran for president in 2004 and distinguished himself as an articulate purveyor of national policy.

So, the United States is back in the climate change game.

That, I daresay, is a very good thing for the future of the planet. Or at least it could be a good thing if the industrialized world pulls its collective head out and gets busy seeking solutions.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

POTUS to Pope: God love ya

Leave it to President Biden to, um, offer an everyman’s salutation to one of the world’s most beloved religious leaders.

Biden has flown to Rome to meet with our economic allies as part of the G20 summit. He paid a call on Pope Francis I in the Vatican.

At the end of the meeting, the president of the United States — the second Catholic ever elected to our nation’s highest political office — told the Holy Father, “God love ya.”

I don’t know how His Holiness responded to it. I trust that he took it in stride. Hey, he’s God’s vicar on Earth. I am sure he has heard just about all there is to hear from God’s other fallible human creatures.

Nice going, Mr. President.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Unity? Far from it!

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President Biden might have been able to declare some form of victory today had any Republicans had taken part in the negotiation that produced a $1.75 trillion spending bill that appears headed for final approval in Congress.

Sadly, he cannot. Why? Because the Grumpy Obstructionist Party won’t take part in anything pitched by a Democratic president.

This kind of obstructionism simply enrages me, a self-proclaimed “good government progressive” blogger/pundit/cheap-seat occupier.

I want the GOP to take part in this government, which does involve them as well as Democrats. Instead, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell and his House counterpart, Kevin McCarthy, have opted to dig in against the Democrats and the POTUS.

Good government is a team sport. That means, in my view, the whole team comprising members of both parties. Instead, we’re getting a government run by roughly half of the House and the Senate along with the guy who sits in the big office in the White House.

President Biden vowed, in a manner of speaking, to bridge the gap between the parties that grew to enormous size during the administration of Biden’s immediate predecessor. Indeed, the 45th POTUS had no interest or skill in bridging that gap. Biden, at least, brought considerable legislative experience to the White House.

He has yet to bridge the great divide. I hope he can get there.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com