Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Both sides need to talk … to each other

Fairness dictates that I make this complaint of Democratic politicians just as I did of Republican politicians during the previous presidential administration.

I want Democrats to talk to Republicans and I am terribly distressed that they aren’t reaching to the other side of the great divide.

Think back to the term of Donald J. Trump. The Republican president chose to speak only to fellow Rs on Capitol Hill. He allowed the GOP caucus to craft that tax cut bill that favored rich folks. Democrats wanted no part of the deal. The then-POTUS didn’t reach out to them. He stiffed ’em!

That guy is gone. The new president, Joe Biden, has resorted to talking mainly to Democrats on his Build Back Better agenda. Indeed, GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell has made his point clear: Ain’t no way the Republicans are going to support anything that comes from a Democratic president. President Biden figures: What the hell is the point in talking to them?

Well, I believe he should. Just as I believe that his predecessor should have talked to Democrats in search of common ground.

I have spoken of late about “good government.” This is how government ought to work. Compromise is not a four-letter word.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Some perspective, eh?

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A certain amount of context has been tossed aside in the discussion over whether to approve President Biden’s plan to “Build Back Better.”

We have become fixated on the number: 3.5 trillion 
 as in dollars.

What has become tossed aside is that the number that Biden and congressional progressives want would cover a 10-year period.

So, that figures to be a $350 billion expenditure annually to do a number of things: improve roads and bridges; modernize air travel; develop ship channels; improve Internet broadband service.

Here’s some more perspective. The United States of America boasts a $20 trillion annual economy, which suggests to me that $350 billion each year is like so much spittle in the proverbial bucket.

Congressional Republicans and some moderate congressional Democrats are wringing their hands over the amount of money that progressives want to spend. Again, I have to wonder: Why?

If the plan is to spread this expense out over a 10-year span of time, why are we quibbling over the total figure that in the grand scheme seems less relevant when you add some needed context to the discussion?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Clumsiness in full view

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Winston Churchill’s opinion of democracy is playing out in full view of the world at this moment.

The great British statesman said — and I will paraphrase it broadly — that “democracy is the worst form of government except all others that have been tried”

So we are now watching members of our Congress haggle, quarrel, cajole each other over how to avoid a debt-default crisis while at the same time haggling over how to improve our nation’s infrastructure.

My trick knee is telling me that somehow, some way and in some fashion the Democrats who run Congress are going to find their way out of the thicket. They have a key ally in the White House: President Joseph R. Biden, who spent 36 years as a senator. The president knows how to legislate.

Congressional Republicans, of course, are sitting on the sidelines. They aren’t part of this haggling, which is boiling down to a dispute between Democratic liberals and moderates.

It’s messy. It’s cumbersome. It’s the kind of governance that the 20th century’s greatest statesman — Winston Churchill — said would occur.

Excuse the cliche, but this really is a great country.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

‘GOP’ takes new meaning

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Attention, my friends in the Republican Party.

Your political organization, once known as the Grand Old Party, has acquired a new moniker. It’s called the Grubby Obstructionist Party.

Yes, the party that once was able to govern effectively working with Democrats in Congress and the White House, has become a party intent on furthering some nitwit political agenda.

The GOP has decided to block moves to bump up the debt ceiling. It won’t allow the nation to pay its bills. It is going to block President Biden’s Build Back Better legislative package — which would be paid out over several years. It is now threatening to shut down the government … again! Why? Because its intention is to do harm to a duly elected president.

Democrats are scrambling at this moment to figure out a way to work around their GOP colleagues, the same colleagues who saw no problem with boosting the debt ceiling when one of their guys was in the White House and when they controlled the legislative branch of government.

Now it’s changed. Except that it hasn’t really changed. The obligations are the same now as they always have been.

The Grubby Obstructionist Party — whose U.S. Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said the debt ceiling must be increased but won’t allow his Senate GOP caucus to be part of it — has shown itself to be unfit to govern.

Disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, national news, State news

Our border isn’t ‘open’

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How many times do I have to say this: We do not have “open borders’? 

That is the mantra being recited time and again by far right wing opponents of President Biden, who continue to insist that our borders — particularly our southern border — have been flung wide open for anyone to pour into the country.

Let’s review what just happened along the border with Mexico near Del Rio, Texas.

Thousands of Haitians congregated under an international bridge. They were fleeing corruption in their country as well as fleeing the destruction brought by a killer earthquake.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott deployed Department of Public Safety officers to the border to assist Customs and Border Patrol agents in managing the chaotic scene. U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials were on it, too.

Now the crowd is gone. The migrants have been sent back to Haiti, sent to third countries or are being processed to achieve legal immigrant status.

Is that a signal that we have an “open border”? No. It isn’t!

Our borders are no more “open” than they have been during the terms of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter … I’ll stop there.

Yet the critics of Joe Biden seize on the chaos brought forth and are offering the canard about “open borders” as a weapon to use against him. One of those critics, former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, writes in Newsweek, “We are encountering more people at our southern border than any other time in the last 21 years. Two months in a row, the numbers exceeded 200,000; in August 2021, the numbers represented a 317 percent increase over August of last year.”

Biden Has Effectively Opened Our Border. He Is Once Again Vindicating Trump | Opinion (msn.com)

OK, Dr. Carson. How are they responding to that influx? We aren’t just letting ’em pour in, doc! Get a grip here.

Yes, the Biden team needs to do better. Yes, they need to make their response more efficient. And, yes, we cannot tolerate the sight of mounted CBP officers herding Haitians like cattle as they seek shelter from the misery they are fleeing.

However, the border isn’t “open.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Will POTUS stay true?

Joe Biden made what I thought at the time — and I still do — was an earnest pledge to be “president for all Americans, even those who didn’t vote for me.”

Well, President Biden’s pledge could — and I hope it doesn’t — face a stern test down the line if something truly tragic happens in a congressional district represented by one of his more, um, ardent critics.

I refer to Rep. Ronny Jackson of Amarillo, the Republican elected from the 13th Congressional District of Texas, where my wife and I lived before we moved to the D/FW Metroplex in 2019.

Jackson has been on a relentless Twitter tirade against the president. He calls him unfit for office; he questions Biden’s mental acuity; he suggests that the president needs to take a cognitive test to prove his fitness. He has been openly skeptical about the legitimacy of Biden’s election; he has bought into The Big Lie. Dude’s been incessant.

So, what might happen? I don’t wish this on anyone in the 13th district, but just suppose …

A killer tornado rips through Amarillo. An EF-5 monster. Something that destroys huge swaths of the city. What is Rep. Jackson going to do then? Will he throw himself, on behalf of his constituents, at the mercy of the federal government, of which President Biden is the chief executive? Sure he will.

The president, though, will be duty- and honor-bound to make good on his pledge to serve all Americans. I have full faith that President Biden would make good on his pledge.

If only the congressman from my former place of residents would cease with the moronic Twitter taunts … you know?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

No to ‘executive privilege’

Earth to Donald John Trump.

There is no “executive privilege” available to the former POTUS as he fights to prevent a House select committee from issuing subpoenas for key aides in its hunt for the truth behind the 1/6 insurrection.

The former POTUS said this, according to The Hill: “We will fight the Subpoenas on Executive Privilege and other grounds, for the good of our Country, while we wait to find out whether or not Subpoenas will be sent out to Antifa and BLM for the death and destruction they have caused in tearing apart our Democrat-run cities throughout America,” the former president said in a statement.

It’s not gonna work, Mr. Former Liar in Chief.

Executive privilege fight poses hurdles for Trump | TheHill

You see, there is no executive privilege for former POTUSes.

The House of Representatives formed a select committee to root out the cause and effect of the insurrection that erupted on 1/6. It also intends to seek recommendations on how to prevent attacks from recurring. I wish the panel well in that search.

As for the former Insurrectionist in Chief, he is whistling in the wind if he thinks he can find a way to prevent the likes of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former chief strategist Steve Bannon from testifying before the House committee.

President Biden said as well that he won’t allow such executive privilege requests to be processed through the White House.

The former president incited the riotous mob to storm Capitol Hill on 1/6. Its intent was to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College result of the 2020 election that chose Biden over his predecessor. It failed, but the riot managed to inflict grievous damage to our democratic process.

So the House select committee’s work will require members of the former POTUS’s administration to stand before it, take an oath to tell the truth and then to divulge what they knew and when they knew it. The former president’s effort to prevent that from occurring is doomed to fail … as it should.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Ex-POTUS brings Big Lie to Texas

Donald Trump said what?

That he wants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to add a “forensic audit” of the 2020 presidential election in Texas to the Legislature’s special session agenda? Good ever-lovin’ grief!

The Texas Tribune reported:

In a letter published Thursday, Trump said, “Texans have big questions about the November 2020 Elections,” and time is running out to conduct an audit of the “2020 Presidential Election Scam” because paper ballots are kept for only 22 months after an election.

“Governor Abbott, we need a ‘Forensic Audit of the 2020 Election’ added to the call,” Trump wrote. “We’re quickly running out of time and it must be done this week.”

Despite his victory in Texas and no credible evidence of widespread fraud, Donald Trump calls for election audit legislation | The Texas Tribune

The only Texans who “have big questions about the … election” are the loons who have swilled The Big Lie being served up by the 45th POTUS. And it is a lie. The 2020 presidential election was secure in Texas. It was done legally. It resulted in POTUS 45 earning the state’s electoral votes.

What in the world is the former Numbskull in Chief seeking to do here? Don’t answer that. I know.

He is seeking to sow more doubt about an election that President Biden won fairly and squarely. He has alleged the election was “rigged” to defeat him. In truth, the only “rigging” being sought is by the ex-POTUS and his cult followers. It reminds me of how the then-Liar in Chief kept accusing the media and his foes of fomenting “fake news” while he was promoting phony stories about, oh, Barack Obama’s citizenship.

Now he wants Gov. Abbott — one of his minions — to order an audit of an election where there was no fraud?

Give me a break!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

What happened to Meghan?

Hey, I swear I remember Meghan McCain — the former “The View” co-host who’s taken on a new gig as a columnist for a British newspaper — saying how she “loves” President Biden and would be hard-pressed to say anything negative about him.

Now she writes in The Daily Mail that Joe Biden is on track to be a “worse” president than Jimmy Carter.

Whoa, Meghan McCain! Hold the phone!

MEGHAN McCAIN: Joe Biden is shaping up to be a worse president than Jimmy Carter  | Daily Mail Online

McCain is the daughter, let’s recall, of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, one of Joe Biden’s best friends in the Senate. McCain was a Republican; Biden is a Democrat. Their friendship was forged shortly after McCain joined a Senate staff as a military adviser to a committee on which Biden served.

Now the young woman who said she “loves” the president has turned on him, calling him feckless, unreliable and cantankerous.

Look, she’s entitled to change her mind about politicians, even those who hold occupy a special place in her heart. I am just waiting, though, for an explanation from Meghan McCain on the dramatic change in her feelings toward the president of the United States.

As for President Biden being “worse” than President Carter, I need to remind McCain that Jimmy Carter did manage to negotiate a peace deal between Israel and Egypt … which has held firm and solid through thick and thin.

So, let’s stop with the Carter-bashing. Hmmm?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden

POTUS dons legislator’s hat

This thought occurs to me, so I’ll share it briefly.

President Biden is trying to negotiated a legislative deal with moderate and progressive congressional Democrats. Then the following dawned on me.

Biden spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate. He then spent eight years as vice president. That’s 44 years negotiating experience with lawmakers.

The way I figure it, President Biden is the most experienced legislator in the meetings he is having with congressional Democrats. He knows how to cajole, coddle and convince legislators to do what’s right.

If only he could work his legislative skill on congressional Republicans who — sad to say — just won’t wheel and deal with a master of wheeling and dealing.

This is the value of having a POTUS who knows how government works. Let’s see if it pays off.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com