Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

‘No’ on executive privilege

Imagine my (non)surprise at news that the Biden administration said “no way” to a request to grant executive privilege stipulations to his immediate predecessor.

POTUS No. 45 asked No. 46’s administration to grant those privileges as the House select committee summons key aides to 45 to testify on what they knew about the events of 1/6.

President Biden’s team said “no way” to the request. Biden said in a statement that the nation needs to know the whole truth behind what happened on the day Donald Trump incited the riot that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election … which Biden won!

There’s no argument here as to what the House panel seeks. It wants all the information it get obtain. My sense is that the best place to look is into the records of those who worked most closely with the former Insurrectionist in Chief.

Go for it, House select committee!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

This is ‘pro-business’?

How in the name of sound policy does a “conservative” Republican governor who touts his state’s “business-friendly” climate issue an executive order that demands private businesses refrain from issuing mandates that could save the lives of employees and customers?

That is what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has done in his ongoing fight to defy President Biden’s effort to get businesses and government agencies to do their part to rid the nation and the world of the COVID-19 virus.

So help me, I don’t get it. Then again, there are a lot of things about GOP governing strategy that go beyond my ability to understand. This is just one of them.

Abbott issued an executive order that prohibits private business owners from taking steps that could prevent the spread of a killer virus. Where I come from, I call that “government intrusion.” Oh sure, Abbott and his minions say that Biden and his supporters are intruding into private business affairs through their vaccine and mask mandates. I am going to side with the president on this one. Big surprise … huh?

Gov. Abbott’s order actually is inviting businesses to join him in defying a national effort aimed at protecting us against the virus. Let’s see, the virus has killed more than 700,000 Americans already. Right? So the president wants to incentivize Americans into getting vaccinated and to take measures to protect themselves — and others — against a deadly infection.

Gov. Greg Abbott has just tossed the state’s pro-business playbook into the crapper. Good luck trying to retrieve it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Is our grumpiness terminal?

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The thought just occurred to me.

Could it be that we have entered a period of terminal grumpiness, that our dissatisfaction with government is a carryover that cannot be shaken loose no matter how well our politicians are functioning in the moment?

I see that President Biden’s job approval rating stands at just a bit north of 43%. It’s about 9 points less than his disapproval rating.

Voters’ opinion of Congress is worse than that. We are feeling testy toward the speaker of the House, the minority leader of the House, both party leaders in the Senate.

What’s going on? We well might be turning the corner on the pandemic; we’re still adding jobs to an economy battered by the disease, albeit at a too-slow rate; joblessness is down. Yes, we have immigration issues that need to be resolved. Our lawmakers cannot get our nation’s budgeting process figured out.

But damn! I just get this nagging notion that public opinion polling suggests a restiveness that might be carrying over from years past, or from months past.

I don’t see data that examines what is driving Americans’ distrust in government. I hear plenty of anecdotal stuff stemming from the previous administration’s tenure, about how the ex-POTUS was constantly railing against the “deep state” and those who collected all that power. Voters bought into a lot of what he was saying. I wasn’t one of them. My faith in government remains quite strong as does my belief that government can — and eventually will — right itself.

I don’t want there to be a state of terminal anger. There are too many good things waiting to occur. At least that’s my hope.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Yes, but he still lost!

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Those who adhere to the cult beliefs of the 45th president of the United States keep telling us that the will and wishes of “74 million American voters” should not be ignored.

OK. I get that. More than 74 million voters cast their ballots for the guy who finished second in the race for the presidency in 2020. That is the second-greatest vote total ever recorded; the greatest vote total was rolled up by President Biden, who pulled in more than 81 ballots.

And, yes, they were legitimately cast ballots.

So, to the sore losers who cannot accept that their guy finished second in a two-man for the presidency in 2020 I say only: Get the fu** over it!

They won’t. Not as long as their cult hero continues to foment The Big Lie about vote fraud and insist that even with all the “forensic audits” he is demanding that he still won the 2020 election.

There have been many photo finishes over many decades of presidential elections. Richard Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy by 100,000 votes in 1960; he accepted the result and moved on. Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in 2000; that election wasn’t settled until the Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida with Bush leading by 537 ballots; Bush was awarded the state’s electoral votes and he took the oath … after Gore conceded defeat and pledged his support of the new president.

The yammering that continues to this day about POTUS 45 collecting 74 million votes ignores the obvious, which is that his opponent received 7 million more votes and won the election!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Gullibility: Is it terminal?

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How many times must one say the same thing, that The Big Lie being fomented by a defeated, twice-impeached POTUS is destructive to the very institutions that the former Liar in Chief vowed to protect and defend?

Yet he keeps telling it. That the 2020 election was “stolen” through “widespread voter fraud,” that President Biden isn’t really the president of the United States, that the ex-POTUS actually won an election he lost bigly!

But he does. He tells the lie. The gullible among his cadre/cabal of believers buy into it. They cannot be dissuaded that their leader is a pathological liar who cannot tell the truth if it were to slap him on his ample backside.

It’s a frustration that gnaws at people such as yours truly who continue to insist that the 2020 election was conducted freely, fairly, legally and ethically. I mean, the POTUS brought in a team of experts to ensure it would done that way prior to the election.

The team, led by election overseer Christopher Krebs, did what they were charged to do. They assembled a process that produced the most secure election in U.S. history. What did they get for their success? They got canned! The ex-Imbecile in Chief fired Krebs for proclaiming the election’s integrity.

So, the frustration mounts as the former POTUS keeps conveying The Big Lie and cementing his place as the most dangerous former POTUS in American history.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Debt or investment?

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One man’s piling onto the national debt is another man’s “investment in the future.”

So it goes with the debate over Build Back Better, which is President Biden’s domestic spending initiative that is hung up in wrangling between congressional Democrats and Republicans and, yes, even between factions within the Democratic Party.

Whether it’s a $3.5 trillion spending package over 10 years or a $1.5 trillion package, it’s a lot of money.

What is so damn troubling, though, is that the GOP caucus is now worried about the national debt. It wasn’t worried one little bit about it when Donald Trump pitched an idea about cutting taxes for rich people, depriving the government of revenue it could “invest” in programs to help the rest of us. Now, though, it is all hung up on the debt and the cost of the infrastructure package that Biden and some within the Democratic caucus want.

Yeah, I know. It’s politics. That’s a family member of mine’s favorite rejoinder. It’s his fallback position when he can’t find any justification for the nonsense being bandied about.

It still stinks, man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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