Tag Archives: impeachment

DC riot, Donald Trump, national news

What is Trump’s legacy?

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REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger

Donald J. Trump’s presidential legacy is being written at this moment and from my standpoint — as if it’s a big surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly — it will contain many more negatives than positive achievements.

It will start with two impeachments and two Senate trials. He skated clear of conviction both times, although for reasons that had more to do with the cult following he built in Congress than the merits of the articles of impeachment brought against him.

It will wind its way through the alleged corruption that congressional investigators are uncovering as they pore through evidence related to the 1/6 insurrection.

It will contain plenty of mention of the myriad lies that poured forth from Trump, including the lie about the pandemic’s initial seriousness and how Trump withheld that knowledge from a public that needed to know what it faced.

The legacy will include the insurrection, the riot on Capitol Hill by the mob of traitors who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost. Accordingly, it also will include Trump being the only president in history to refuse to concede an election that he lost fairly and legally.

I have said more times than I can remember that Trump never should have been elected president in the first place. He won the 2016 election in the most astounding political fluke in American history.

The end of the 1/6 probe by the House select committee is getting closer to its conclusion. The panel does not have a lot of time left to finish its work. It is working with breathtaking speed in its search for the why, the how and the consequence of that hideous assault on our democracy. It will offer solutions to preventing it from recurring.

It’s going to have Donald Trump’s grimy fingerprints all over it … and that, I dare say, is going to be where the ex-president’s legacy will be engraved forever.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, State news

Cruz misfires with impeachment threat

(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Ted Cruz has lost his marbles. His butter has slipped off his noodles. He has gone ’round the bend. He is nuttier than a Snickers bar.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas — the guy who once described Donald Trump as a “sniveling coward” but then became Trump’s primo suck-up senator — believes President Biden can be impeached if Republicans take command of the House after the midterm election.

According to the Texas Tribune: “​​Democrats weaponized impeachment,” he said, referring to House Democrats twice voting to impeach former President Donald Trump. “They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him. And one of the real disadvantages of doing that … is the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, you know, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/04/ted-cruz-joe-biden-impeachment/

Wow! I am trying to catch my breath.

The Cruz Missile has misfired — again! Democrats didn’t impeach Trump for “partisan purposes.” They impeached him for trying to persuade a foreign leader to do him a political favor; then the House impeached Trump for inciting the riot on 1/6. The weaponization of the impeachment process occurred on the Republican side of the great congressional divide when all but a dignified handful of GOP House members and senators decided to give Trump a pass when he clearly committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

For Cruz to suggest that President Joe Biden faces potential impeachment if the GOP takes command of the House is tantamount to inviting a constitutional crisis where none should exist.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Will No. 45 be nominated?

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Some pundits/commentators/thinkers I respect a great deal are throwing a major scare into this old man’s body.

They are suggesting that at this moment Donald J. Trump is the “favorite” to be nominated by the Republican Party to run for president in 2024.

Let’s ponder that for just a brief moment.

The House of Representatives impeached him twice. The first time was for soliciting political favors from a foreign government; a clear violation of the law, not to mention the Constitution. The second time was for inciting an insurrection against the government as Congress sought to ratify the Electoral College returns from the 2020 presidential election; another clearly defined “high crime and misdemeanor.”

He skated twice because not enough Senate Republicans had enough courage to stand by their oaths of office and convict him.

The former POTUS has hijacked the GOP. He is holding it hostage to his whims and machinations. He is the man, the myth, the legend in his own mind.

He is making noises about wanting to run again.

If he does and if the GOP is flat-out stupid enough to nominate this clown once again — after all the damage he has inflicted on the government he once vowed to protect — then, ladies and gents, we are in far more trouble than I ever imagined.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Impeachment? Really, guys?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Congressional Republicans are looking for payback.

Given that the guy who ran for president under their party got impeached twice, they want to impeach President Biden if he doesn’t get all Americans and our allies out of Afghanistan, which has been taken over by the notorious Taliban terrorist group.

It’s looking as though the president might be able to head off any idiotic impeachment effort. American airplanes are ferrying Americans and Afghan allies out of Kabul at an accelerating rate.

At last count, more than 40,000 of them have been evacuated.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Biden will commit a “high crime and misdemeanor” if he leaves any American behind. Rep. Pat Fallon of Sherman, Texas — speaking to a town hall crowd in Rockwall the other day — said all House members should draft impeachment articles if Biden’s evacuation order falls short.

I thought Graham and Biden were pals. Not so with Fallon, a right-wing fire-breather who just joined Congress this year.

The 45th POTUS got impeached for two valid reasons: the first time for soliciting a political favor from a foreign head of state; the second time for inciting the insurrection on 1/6.

Joe Biden does not deserve to be impeached. This is a non-call.

International news

Deadline may be extended

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s plate of critical decisions is piling up and spilling onto his lap.

Here’s another one that looks more imminent each passing day: The Aug. 31 deadline for pulling out of Afghanistan might be delayed a while longer. Why? Because the president has promised to get every American and Afghan ally who who wants out of the country safe passage to freedom.

My strong hunch is that the project won’t be completed by Aug. 31.

Does that mean our troops who have been sent back to help with the evacuation will remain permanently? Hardly. It means that Joe Biden’s pledge to end our involvement in an Afghan civil war will have be set back until we can get everyone out of there.

Congressional Republicans are threatening impeachment if Biden leaves anyone behind. Frankly, that is the rhetoric of tinhorns. Yes, our withdrawal has gone badly. President Biden is seeking to correct it and we are sending an accelerated number of evacuees out of the country each day.

But the deadline for an end is a week away. Can we finish the job in that short span of time? I doubt it. Keep the troops on call, Mr. President, until the mission is accomplished.

national news

GOP faces a reckoning

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There can be no denying that the Republican Party is facing a reckoning.

It has to decide if it is going to remain on the track laid out by an individual who has corrupted a once-great party. Or will it return to matters of principle and public policy?

The individual who corrupted the party — the 45th POTUS — lacks any defining principle. Unless you consider revenge, spite and chaos to be principles that define a political party.

POTUS 45 had zero Republican Party policy experience when he entered the 2016 GOP primary campaign. He won the party’s nomination that year by hammering his foes into submission. Then he won the presidency — with a bit of help from the FBI and its infamous e-mail investigation. He also won because of incompetence in the Democratic nominee’s campaign.

The presidency became POTUS’s play thing. Many of his top campaign aides found themselves indicted on criminal charges. The corruption ran throughout the highest rungs of his political ladder.

Oh, and then he got impeached twice. Once for trying to coerce a foreign government into doing his political bidding and once for inciting an insurrection that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Many of the men and women who served with him have stood behind his corruption and his venality. For what? Someone needs to explain to me the strange grip this clown has over a party with which he had no prior knowledge or familiarity.

The 2022 midterm election is coming up. POTUS 45 wants to have a big time say in who gets elected. He wants to elect those who are blindly loyal to him. Oh, boy. If the party follows that course, it will consign itself — as well as the nation — to a future shrouded in darkness and corruption.

I am a good-government progressive who wants the Republican Party to rediscover its basis for existing and to debate the Democratic Party openly and honestly without the hatred that stains the rhetoric that comes from the one-time Liar in Chief.

Is that possible? For the nation’s sake, I hope so.

national news

Liz Cheney: doomed!

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

As I watch the once-great Republican Party devolve into a collection of cultists, I am left to lament the pending political demise of a GOP politician who has the temerity to stand for the rule of law.

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is facing a certain primary challenge next year. She now appears likely to lose that contest to a challenger who has swilled the Kool-Aid dispensed by the former Insurrectionist in Chief.

This pending turn of events saddens me terribly.

It’s not necessarily that Rep. Cheney stands tall in my gallery of political heroes. I am not a fan of her conservative politics. I am a fan of her stand against the former POTUS’s actions on 1/6 when he incited the riot of terrorists who stormed the Capitol Building and sought to stop the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The House of Representatives impeached the ex-POTUS a second time for that act. Cheney joined a handful of Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him. She has stood firm on the oath she took to defend the Constitution. Cheney said the party is not beholden to any individual.

For that she is going to face a stern primary challenge in Wyoming. I fear she is going to lose. She might lose bigly.

The country would be worse off if she is replaced by another cultist.

national news

Worse than Watergate!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The toxic presidency brought to us by the 45th POTUS has been shoved into the dust bin, but its legacy lives on.

I fear it will be with us for a good while. Although I will pray to God in heaven it won’t last forever. If the Good Lord is listening, he will consign it to that place where no one dare venture.

The 45th POTUS’s legacy will be a presidency that became engulfed in a scandal that far eclipses Watergate, that other great constitutional crisis that enveloped the nation nearly 50 years ago.

On Aug. 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon told the nation he would resign the office effective at noon the next day. Vice President Gerald Ford — who took office the previous year when the previous VP resigned in another scandal — would take the reins of government; President Ford became the first man to hold the office without ever being elected POTUS or VPOTUS.

The 45th POTUS — whose name I refused to publish on this blog — was a disgrace to the office from the moment he took his hand off the Bible while taking the oath. He got impeached twice by the House of Representatives; yes, he dodged expulsion because Senate Republicans refused to convict him of the crimes he committed.

As bad as his term as POTUS was, the worst would come after he lost his bid for re-election. He incited an insurrection against the government on 1/6, the day it set aside to certify the 2020 election result. He instigated a riot by terrorists, plowing asunder the notion of a “peaceful presidential transition.”

He has continued to foment The Big Lie about the election being stolen. We are seeing reports now about an alleged “coup attempt” promoted by the power-hungry POTUS. The former Insurrectionist in Chief’s company has been indicted by a district attorney’s office. There might be more indictments to come … involving the head of the company (the ex-POTUS) himself.

All of this adds up to a legacy that — as my memory serves  to remind me — makes Watergate look almost tame by comparison. It wasn’t tame as it was unfolding. Nearly five decades later, Watergate has a different feel and look to it juxtaposed to what continues to unfold with regard to the most recent former POTUS.

My fervent desire now is for President Biden to continue to strengthen his grip on the presidency and deliver us all from the wreckage that his predecessor has left behind.

national news

Impeach Biden over … border? Really?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Chip Roy has signed his name to the Republican Party’s loony bin caucus roster.

The Texas U.S. representative wants the House to impeach President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas because they haven’t done enough to secure our border against illegal immigration and — I will presume — all those criminals who are “pouring” into the country.

Impeach them? For that? Is this guy serious? He thinks he is. I happen to believe he is nuttier than a Snickers bar.

Texas Rep. Chip Roy calls for impeachment of President Biden, DHS Secretary Mayorkas (msn.com)

If we’re going to apply that so-called “logic” as grounds for impeachment, than every president who came before Biden should have been sent to the House gallows to be impeached. Dare I mention that should include Republican presidents as well as Democrats? There. I just did.

Rep. Roy needs to get a grip on reality.

President Biden inherited a mess when he took office. His presidential predecessor had not stemmed the illegal immigrant flow. Neither had the man who preceded him, Barack Obama, or the man who was on the watch before that, George W. Bush.

Republicans along our southern border — and that is the crux of the argument here — are yapping and yammering about the pi**-poor job Biden allegedly is doing. I agree he needs to take a stronger grip on the border issue and, yes, it is a “crisis.”

Impeach him and the DHS boss for it? This matter doesn’t even begin to rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor.

DC riot, national news

Rep. Cheney rules?

(Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

GREEN RIVER, Wyo. — As we approached the Utah border with Wyoming, I was hoping to receive a unique form of greeting from the state we were entering.

I wanted to see a sign that said something like: Welcome to Wyoming, home of Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans in Congress with a backbone.

We didn’t see it. However, as we trekked through this state I am left to wonder a thing or two about the embattled congresswoman.

Allow to me clear the air a bit.

I did not much care for Cheney’s decision to run for the lone U.S. House seat in this marvelous, sprawling and so very scenic state. She is an arch-conservative thinker, the daughter of an equally conservative former Wyoming congressman, defense secretary and vice president. What’s more, I considered her a carpetbagger, given that she did not grow up in this state; she is a child of Washington, D.C., where her dad served for so many years prior to becoming VP during the Bush 43 administration.

She was elected to the House. Then she did something so remarkable that it has given me a reason to rethink some of my original dislike of her as a politician.

Rep. Cheney voted to impeach Donald J. Trump in his second House impeachment. She was one of a handful of GOP lawmakers who agreed with most of the country: Donald Trump incited an insurrection against the government, which at the time of the Jan. 6 riot was certifying President Biden’s election. Trump is still having none of that and Cheney is having none of Trump’s insistence in the Big Lie that he was the victim of some massive electoral theft conspiracy.

She has said so with vigor and passion, so much so that nitwits like Florida U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz — the alleged child molester and sex trafficker — has come to Wyoming to criticize his fellow conservative colleague.

So it is with some measure of gratitude that I wandered through this state knowing that it is represented in the House of Reps by an individual who is willing to stand up the Trump cult of personality.

If only she could take the next step and endorse some of the progressive notions being kicked around by President Biden and his Democratic friends in Congress.

Well, we can’t have all that we want … right?