Tag Archives: impeachment

national news

How can this riot stand?

No doubt about this: I will go to my grave never understanding how in the name of sanity can anyone justify what happened on 1/6, how anyone can possibly view the riotous mob of traitors as a demonstration of “legitimate political discourse.”

The mob stormed Capitol Hill on the urging of a president of the United States who had lost re-election, who then exhorted his fanatic followers to “take back” the government and to “fight like hell” if they felt the need to rough up whoever stood in their way.

So, the rioters did what they were encouraged to do.

Every time I watch video of that hideous demonstration of sedition, I get angry all over again. The traitors threatened to “hang Mike Pence!” per the signs they were carrying. Have you seen the pictures of the noose? Lovely, yes? Pence, the vice president on that day, was performing his constitutional duty by leading the certification of the Electoral College tally that elected Joe Biden as president. Biden’s predecessor would have none of it. Hence, he incited the rioters.

And yet, there remains to this very moment congressional Republicans — who fled for their lives in the face of the rioters on 1/6 — who deny what they witnessed in real time. They cast votes against impeaching the POTUS who fired up the mob. Some of them have said the mob was acting like any “tourist” group strolling through the Capitol Building.

You … bet. I don’t think any group of tourists would have sh** on the floor of the Capitol Building, or smashed through windows, or yelled profanities at police officers seeking to protect the House members and senators who were the traitors’ targets.

There needs to be some justice delivered for what happened on 1/6. We’re starting to get some trial results. A Wylie, Texas, man has been convicted of five felony counts related to his role in the riot. There will be many more trials and deals struck along the way.

The president who caused it all? His day is coming, too. He needs to be held to account for the insurrection he incited. I do not want to check out of his world knowing that he has slithered his way clear once again.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Impeachment ‘ghost’ haunts

Try as I have done to avoid mentioning the impeachments of Donald J. Trump, I have discovered that the first impeachment deserves a mention on this blog. So … please forgive me this brief screed.

The Donald got Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the phone and said he needed a “favor, though.” The favor The Donald sought was for Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Joe Biden was considered a likely 2020 presidential candidate and the guy The Donald reportedly feared. In exchange for the dirt, Trump would allow Zelenskyy to receive the military aid package he sought from the United States.

Trump denied the package. Why? Because Zelenskyy wouldn’t do what The Donald wanted.

For that “perfect phone call,” The Donald got impeached by the House of Representatives.

Why mention it here? Because Ukraine once again is trying to obtain military assistance. I cannot stop wondering whether Ukraine would have fared even better against the Russian aggressors had they obtained the missiles and ordnance they were promised by Congress, but denied by The Donald, who sought a bizarre political favor from President Zelenskyy, which I considered at the time to be a criminal act.

The Donald survived both impeachments. Ukraine, though, became a victim of a U.S. president’s insatiable quest for power and is paying the price at this moment.

Shameful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

War brings so much pain

I detest writing about war, even though in my many years as a print journalist I haven’t had much exposure to the varied human conflicts that have at times swirled around us.

That all said, the Ukraine-Russia war has consumed a good bit of everyone’s attention for the past two-plus weeks. The Russians invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked act of aggression; they intend to take the country back from the independence it has enjoyed since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It is a disgraceful display of bullying by the Russian dictator/despot Vladimir Putin.

The Russians now have selected “soft” targets, such as hospitals and schools. They have targeted civilians such as women and children. They have earned every ounce of scorn that the world is heaping on them and is heaping specifically on Putin.

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that Ukraine is not rolling over. The Ukrainians are putting up a hell of a fight against superior enemy forces. All the while, Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are standing tall while Putin withers and shrinks in public stature.

History well might write a compelling chapter about Zelenskyy when this fight finally ends. Think of it: a young man who built a career as a comedian and actor is thrust into the Ukrainian presidency, only to become a central figure in the first impeachment of a U.S. president, who tried to persuade Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on a presidential opponent here at home; the president escaped conviction in the U.S. Senate, but Zelenskyy’s role in that impeachment was set in stone.

Now his legacy is being burnished by the courage he is displaying by staying in the Ukraine capital of Kyiv, seeking to rally his constituents to fight with him.

I am going to pray constantly for a relatively quick end to this conflict, as it taxes my emotions even sitting in the peanut gallery far from the fighting. I don’t give a damn what might happen to Putin in its aftermath, but I give plenty of a damn about the future of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He deserves the highest praise possible from an anxious world awaiting the outcome of this aggression.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump, national news, political news

How did this guy get elected?

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

As I watch the congressional probe into 1/6 trudge along — hopefully to a constructive conclusion — and then listen to the focus of that probe, the 45th POTUS, I have come to an inescapable finding.

It is that I will go to my grave wondering how in the name of political wisdom did Donald J. Trump ever get elected president of the United States in first place. And how in the name of all that is sane and rational did this guy ever avoid getting tossed out of office on his oversized backside after the House of Reps impeached him twice?

He preaches The Big Lie about the 2020 election. His cult followers cheer him on. Trump teases them with hints about possibly running again in 2024 in an astonishing bid to get elected a second time to an office he had no business at all ever occupying even one time.

I read this idiot’s comments, given that I prefer to read them than listen to the sound of his voice. I then wonder: What the hell is this guy saying?

The list of treachery, transgressions and outright treason are too numerous to check off here. You know what they are, what they entail, and you know of the damage they have done individually and collectively to our cherished system of representative democracy.

Trump’s election in 2016 is a case study of a politician benefiting from astonishing luck. The popular phrase du jour of that election cycle was that Trump managed to draw “an inside straight,” while winning the Electoral College and losing the actual vote by 3 million ballots to Hillary Rodham Clinton. I have read many accounts over the years since that fluke victory that Trump never believed he would win. When he did win, he was caught flat-footed, with no clue on how to form a government, let alone actually know how to govern.

Four years later, he got drummed out of office by a seasoned politician. He never accepted Joe Biden’s victory and skulked out of Washington the day before President Biden’s inaugural.

The 1/6 committee continues to gather information and sworn testimony from those who witnessed the disgraced ex-POTUS on the day of the traitorous riot on 1/6. We’re getting bits of info here and there about revelations on fake electors seeking to overturn the legitimate election results; about Trump sitting in the White House residence cheering on the rioting traitors; about the ex-POTUS considering blanket pardons for all the scoundrels who pooped on Capitol floors while shouting out their desire to find and “hang” VP Mike Pence.

There is much more to chronicle. I’ll leave it to you to piece together all that you have seen and heard from this moron.

I always have expected us to elect the best among us to public office. To think that one of the very worst among us managed to blunder and bumble his way into the White House simply defies my ability to explain it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, Donald Trump, national news

What is Trump’s legacy?

2 Comments

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?

3 Comments

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.