Tag Archives: Joe Biden

Donald Trump, national news

Bring on the clones!

President Biden has called a leading opponent of California Gov. Gavin Newsom a “clone of … ” oh, you know, the immediate former president of the United States.

I just refer him by various epithets and a mention that he once was the 45th president of the U.S. of A.

Cult leaders have this way of building followings that comprise many such “clones.” Larry Elder, a right-wing talker/blowhard/Big Lie conveyer is just one of ’em.

Newsom figures to survive the recall effort launched against him in the Golden State. Then he can get back to governing and trying to (a) deal with the climate change-induced wildfires and (b) wage war against the COVID 19 pandemic.

What happens now with the cultist who rose to become a leading challenger to the governor? He’ll try to parlay his enhanced celebrity status into some sort of mini-following of his own out west.

This guy Elder is just one of the sickening consequences of the wreckage left behind by the 45t POTUS. He ain’t alone. We have seen and heard from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, congressmen and women from various states throughout the old Confederacy.

My “favorite” clone happens to be Kevin McCarthy, the GOP House leader from California (which goes to show that not all Californians can be labeled as far-leftists). McCarthy actually has said some harsh things about the 45th POTUS in the immediate wake of the 1/6 insurrection. Then he backed off. Now he opposes any independent probe into what happened that terrible day when terrorists stormed Capitol Hill to overturn the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

McCarthy also is a clone of the disgraced, twice-impeached ex-Liar in Chief. McCarthy is a disgraceful political hack. Enough about him … the loser.

The Cult Leader in Chief is leaving us with a shameful legacy of lying, political perversion, sedition and conduct that I would consider to be treasonous. He won’t darken the White House door ever again. His clones will keep up the fight whenever they have a forum to spew their filth.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Waiting for bipartisan thaw

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My patience has its limits, but I am going to give it some more time to bear fruit.

I had hoped that the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States would produce a spirit of bipartisanship we hadn’t seen since, oh, about the time of 9/11. It hasn’t happened.

President Bush handed the office over to President Obama in 2009 and the divisions persisted after the Iraq War dragged on and on. President Obama didn’t make much headway, either, particularly after Sen. Mitch McConnell — the Republican leader — said his No. 1 priority was to make Obama a “one-term president.” President Obama finished his second term in 2017 and handed it off to, umm, the 45th POTUS. It got even worse during the Liar/Numskull/Nitwit/Insurrectionist in Chief’s single term in office.

He vacated the White House earlier this year without so much as a goodbye wave at President Biden’s inaugural. He skulked off without attending his successor’s inauguration.

Biden brought 36 years of U.S. Senate experience and eight years as vice president to the White House. He knows how to play the bipartisan game. He did it with considerable flair during his Senate years.

Alas, all that experience hasn’t played well in the GOP, which has latched onto the Big Lie about phony election theft and vote fraud.

For crying out loud, we cannot even cross the partisan divide on the best way to rid us of a killer virus that has cost us more than 600,000 lives! Biden and his fellow Democrats sing the virtues of masks and vaccines while Republicans and assorted conspiracy lunatics denigrate mask-wearing and question the value of getting vaccinated. Sheesh!

I am going to wish that President Biden can find a way to cross the partisan divide. My hope and my expectation, though, are growing farther apart.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Infrastructure needs to pass

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The numbers aren’t the source of the disagreement, or at least they shouldn’t be the source.

What needs to happen with President Biden’s infrastructure package is that moderate and progressive Democrats need to find some common ground. They need to develop a compromise that enables the rebuilding of our infrastructure, with at least a nod toward some of the tangential issues associated with it, to proceed.

We need to fix our roads, bridges, airports, ship channels and the like. The cost is going to be huge no matter the number they settle on.

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, the moderate West Virginia Democrat, has decided that $3.5 trillion is too much too soon. I disagree with him, but that’s just me. He is the man in position to affect legislation. He wants to pare it back … a lot! I only would implore him to avoid taking away the quality of life improvements contained in the legislation being discussed.

Whether it’s $3.5 trillion or $1.5 trillion or any number between those bookends, there needs to be some progress shown toward rebuilding our infrastructure.

They say it’s best to avoid “letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.” We won’t find perfection in a deeply divided Congress — or between that body and the White House.

There is a lot of good to be harvested. Let’s find it and enact it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Roe v. Wade far from ‘settled’

If you thought the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States had become “settled law,” you had better think again.

The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision is now under a full frontal assault by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature. Texas now has a law on the books that prohibits a woman from obtaining an abortion as early as six weeks into her pregnancy.

President Biden calls the law “unconstitutional.” The current Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to let the law take effect even though it is being contested by multiple lawsuits.

One of the four dissenting justices, Stephen Breyer, calls the SCOTUS decision “very, very, very wrong.”

The Texas Tribune reports: The Texas law is novel for incentivizing private citizens to police abortions. It empowers anyone living in the state of Texas to sue an abortion provider or anyone else they suspect is “aiding and abetting” abortions after the six-week mark. Those opposing the law say this may be far-ranging and could include the abortion provider or anyone who provided transportation to a woman, or counseled or referred a woman for an abortion.

Stephen Breyer calls Supreme Court decision on Texas abortion law ‘wrong’ | The Texas Tribune

There’s a fascinating bit of irony at play here. Conservatives proclaim proudly that they oppose what they call “judicial activism.” They say they dislike court decisions that go beyond the Constitution’s strict adherence to original intent.

From my perch in North Texas, it appears that most of the court’s conservatives — except for Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the liberal wing — are engaging in a raw form of judicial activism by dismissing the lawsuits and declaring that a law that is being challenged should take effect.

Wouldn’t a “conservative” court just let the litigation play out and stay out of the way?

Settled law? Not when you have a group of judicial activists on the nation’s highest court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

9/11 reminds me why I am glad we left

The commemorations we have witnessed today as the nation marks the 20th year since the 9/11 attacks have taken us — in my mind at least — on a dual-track remembrance.

I am reminded of how unified we were immediately after the attacks. President Bush called us to arms to fight the terrorist network that launched the attack. We stood behind the wartime president … for a time.

Then he took us into Iraq. The Iraq War was launched on false pretenses. We invaded a sovereign nation, removed a hated dictator and then got bogged down in another conflict with no clear motive for engaging the Iraqis in the first place.

We took our eyes off the key enemy: the Afghan terrorists.

President Bush infamously said at one point during his time in office he didn’t think much about Osama bin Laden. His successor, President Obama, made it the nation’s mission to bring justice to the mass murderer. Our special forces did so in May 2011.

Yet the war in Afghanistan dragged on.

And on and on …

Which brings me to the second track. President Biden ended that war. I am more glad today than ever that he acted when he did. It is true the withdrawal could have been executed more cleanly. But our troops are off the battlefield.

We have removed the world of thousands of terrorists. No, they aren’t exterminated. Others have stepped up to replace them. Indeed, the Afghan War had turned into a never-ending struggle against an enemy that cannot possibly be wiped off the face of the planet.

However, we retain — throughout unsurpassed military and intelligence capability — the ability to search out and destroy anyone who intends to do us harm the way Osama bin Laden did on 9/11.

May always remember the attacks of that horrific day. May we also always remain alert to the danger that lurks.

However, let us also avoid the kind of quagmire — and that’s what it became in Afghanistan — that always exacts too heavy a price.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, national security

Unity: Is it impossible to find?

Political unity shouldn’t be this hard to find; it shouldn’t be this elusive.

It most certainly is, however.

The nation is honoring the sacrifice we endured on 9/11. Part of the honor has been to salute the unity we felt when President Bush called on us to fight the terrorists who hit us hard, who killed all those Americans.

We answered the terrorists with one clear and forceful voice.

That was then. The unity we felt in the moment didn’t last long. Bush eventually decided to expand our war against terror by invading Iraq in March 2003. The president lied to us. He told us the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction; they didn’t. He also sought to tell us that the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attacks; he didn’t.

We’ve been divided ever since.

Two decades later we are now fighting an even more insidious enemy. It’s a pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 Americans, far more than who died in the 9/11 attacks.

President Biden is seeking to unify us against the pandemic. He can’t find the formula. Our divisions have been cast along partisan lines. Democrats push for vaccine and mask mandates; Republicans resist them both. Think of this for a moment. Our entire nation is being struck by a virus, yet the president can’t unify us.

Surely we don’t require an attack from a foreign enemy to bring us together. Or do we?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

GOP resists POTUS’s effort to keep us safe? Really?

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Did anyone out there ever believe we would see politicians rise up against a presidential decree that seeks to keep all Americans safe from a killer pandemic virus?

If you did, then you are the smartest individuals in all of human history.

I never saw it. Then again, I can be a dim bulb at times … but that’s not the point.

President Biden has issued a stern executive order aimed at private businesses and all federal employees. He insists that employees and federal workers get vaccinated. No debate on it, he said. Companies that do business with the feds must ensure their employees are vaccinated, the president said.

This is a comprehensive effort by our head of state that we no longer will tolerate a pandemic that is caused by those who are unvaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. The overwhelming majority of those who are being hospitalized in this moment are those who haven’t been inoculated against the virus. President Biden said “enough is enough,” or words to that effect.

Now, though, we hear from Republican governors vowing to fight like hell against any effort from the president to do the right thing, which aims to protect all Americans against potential death.

Why are these governors resisting? Oh, I almost forgot. They adhere to the weird whims of the 45th POTUS, the moron who sold us all out by downplaying the severity of the pandemic when it first started killing Americans in late 2019.

Man, oh man. We live in the strangest political climate I ever have seen. It’s weirder than the late 1960s and the Vietnam War protests; or the mid-1970s and the Watergate scandal.

Not only has the former POTUS fomented the Big (damn) Lie about phony vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election. He has persuaded GOP governors that it’s all right to issue orders that result in the sickening and the death of Americans.

Now these nitwits are challenging President Biden’s effort to rid us of this pandemic.

Astonishing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden

Biden pledges to save lives

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President Biden today took on the role of commander in chief in our nation’s fight against a killer virus.

The president has issued an order that every federal employee shall be vaccinated against the virus. Moreover, he said that every private company that does business with the federal government will have its employees vaccinated. He signed an executive order and declared that he now is going to act like a wartime president in the fight against the COVID-19 virus and its assorted variants.

This is what presidents need to do!

Biden’s immediate predecessor as POTUS once famously — and wisely — declared that he saw himself as a “wartime president” when the pandemic took root. The problem, though, is that he didn’t follow through on the declaration. He didn’t walk the wartime walk.

President Biden is demonstrating that he understands the power of his office and the overwhelming priority he must place in protecting the health and the lives of Americans.

We have lost more than 600,000 of our fellow citizens to the virus. It has stricken more than 40 million of us.

Biden’s order figures to affect as many as 80 million Americans who aren’t currently vaccinated. Yes, there might be some out there who cannot take the vaccine on religious grounds. I understand that resistance. I don’t agree with it, but I accept that others have such sincere religious belief.

However, the obstinance being shown by those who want to make some sort of hare-brained political statement about the vaccine is ridiculous on its face.

The Hill reports:

A senior administration official told reporters that under a new executive order to be announced by the president, federal employees will have 75 days to be fully vaccinated, with limited exemptions for religious or medical reasons. There will be no testing option. The order will cover about 100 million workers. 

“It’s simple; if you want to work for the federal government, you must be vaccinated. If you want to do business with the government, you must vaccinate your workforce,” the official said.

Biden to require COVID-19 vaccines, tests for millions of private workers | TheHill

I stand with the president.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, national news

Well … how should this end up?

The following comes from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

It states: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may be a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Let’s see now. How is this going to play out?

A House of Representatives select committee is in the process of rounding up phone records of members of Congress or any other communication they might have had with White House officials on Jan. 6. Oh, that was the date of the insurrection that the former POTUS sought to incite, the one that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

A number of those messages apparently involve Republicans who supported POTUS 45’s phony allegation of “widespread voter fraud.” Now, were they culpable in inciting the riot that resulted in the deaths of police officers and others? Or did their acquiescence contribute to the mayhem that occurred on Capitol Hill on 1/6?

You know who some of them are, right? GOP Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Jim Jordan of Ohio … just to name five of ’em!

Most of us know the truth about the election, that President Biden won it fairly, squarely and legally. We also know what we witnessed on 1/6, the cursing, screaming, the battering administered by the terrorists who stormed into the Capitol Building.

The question of the day, in this context, appears to be this: If the select panel determines that members of Congress aided and gave “comfort to the enemies thereof,” will Congress have the courage and commitment to the oath they all took to remove them from the halls of power?

I hope they will. I fear they won’t.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Afghanistan: Will it get better?

A young friend of ours came over this afternoon to wish us a happy 50th anniversary.

We sat in the living room and he turned back to face me and asked: What do you think about Afghanistan?  He meant the withdrawal, of course, which he described as a “mess.”

I didn’t know quite how to respond. I did not — I do not still — want to offend our young neighbor; he is too sweet of a young man and I don’t want to end up on his “bad side.”

All I could come up with was that the commander in chief, President Biden, had no choice but to end a war that had dragged on for two decades. “To what end does he stay in the fight?” I asked. I reminded our young friend that we had fought there for more than two decades. Do they keep fighting?

My friend smiled. We both changed the subject.

The inglorious end to an inglorious war is bound to bring friends to a rhetorical dead end when the subject comes up. My young friend and I agreed that it will take time for this post-Afghan War period to sort itself out.

I will continue to hope for the best outcome, which I hope means we can keep our eyes and ears dialed in to the nth degree and listen and look for any signs of trouble from the Taliban or any terrorist organization that seeks to do us harm.

My hope, then, is that we keep the drones armed and ready to strike.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com