Tag Archives: Donald Trump

environmental news

POTUS reverses predecessor’s denial

1 Comment

Joe Biden sees climate change as an existential threat to the nation and the world.

Donald Trump called it, among other things, a “hoax,” a figment of the “fake media” and its obsession with leftist policies.

Biden is correct. His predecessor is wrong. Biden was correct to return the United States to the Paris Climate Accord; Trump was wrong to pull us out the accords in 2017.

Which is why many of us are applauding President Biden’s decision to return to the climate change negotiating table and to hammer out potential solutions to what the scientific community has concluded: that humankind’s contribution to the changing world climate compels it to seek solutions.

Biden selected former Secretary of State John Kerry to serve as the administration’s spokesman on climate change issues. He brought Kerry with him to Glasgow to talk with other world leaders about the United States’ potential role in seeking answers to the crisis.

Indeed, Kerry is no novice at this level of international diplomacy. He served for four years as chief diplomat during the Obama administration. Prior to that he served in the U.S. Senate, ran for president in 2004 and distinguished himself as an articulate purveyor of national policy.

So, the United States is back in the climate change game.

That, I daresay, is a very good thing for the future of the planet. Or at least it could be a good thing if the industrialized world pulls its collective head out and gets busy seeking solutions.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

‘Truth Social’? Seriously?

If there is a more egregiously misnamed outfit than the one Donald J. Trump seeks to create, then someone will have to find it for me. I am at a total loss.

The 45th POTUS is going to launch a social media network he is calling “Truth Social.” Truth Social? Is this guy kidding?

The former Liar in Chief couldn’t tell the truth, or recognize the truth, if it slapped him in the face.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social is headed for ’embarrassing’ failures, Daily Beast report says (msn.com)

He lied some on the order of 30,000 times during his term as POTUS, according to a survey done by the Washington Post. He lied when he never needed to lie. His lies were incessant and gratuitous.

Now he wants to create a new social media network, given that Twitter and Facebook have banned him for, um, lying.

I won’t bother to dial into whatever lies POTUS 45 wants to spin.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot

‘Principle’ has been perverted

4 Comments
(MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

The perversion of a concept long thought to be sacrosanct is disturbing to me in the extreme.

The concept is “principle.” The perversion occurs politically, when politicians say one thing and then act in a fashion that bears no resemblance to the principle they purport to follow.

We are watching this play out on Capitol Hill. Republicans in both the Senate and the House say they stand on certain principles. They in fact stand on a cultish loyalty to one of their own, the former president of the United States. It sickens me greatly.

Two examples come to mind; they relate to 1/6.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell told the world that Donald Trump “provoked” the riot that damn near overran Capitol Hill as terrorists sought to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College tally that resulted in the election of President Biden. He spoke angrily of the former president’s role in that provocation. He laid it all on the former POTUS’s lap. He was responsible solely for the riot.

Ditto for House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who reportedly implored the then-POTUS to stop the riot. He told POTUS 45 that people’s lives were endangered. He pleaded with him to call a halt to it. POTUS’s response: “I guess they care more about the election results than you do, Kevin.”

But what in the name of sanity happened after that? The principles on which these two men stood crumbled under their feet.

They both voted against impeaching the president and then against convicting him in the Senate trial that followed the second impeachment of his term in office. How in the world does a politician excoriate another pol for an obvious breach of faith and then stand behind that individual as if nothing ever happened in the first place to draw his ire?

Where I come from, I would define that as hypocrisy in the extreme.

And yet it infects the political process to a degree that I fear the poison will become endemic to our system of government.

It needs to be purged.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

How can we rid ourselves of POTUS 45?

2 Comments
(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Donald John Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

He should be all rights and normal behavior be gone. He should be yesterday’s news. He should be doing whatever it is former POTUSes do; in his case that would be, oh, playing golf.

However, the former Nimrod in Chief won’t go away. He continues to lurk near the edges of the political stage. The former Liar in Chief keeps lying, keeps fomenting The Big Lie about alleged theft during the most recent presidential election.

A famed former secretary of state dies and the former Disrespecter in Chief takes a moment to denigrate the service that Colin Powell delivered to the nation he loved.

You may count me as one American patriot who wants this clown — the former POTUS — to vanish from the scene. However, he just won’t relent. He won’t fade away.

A member of my family asked me recently to stop writing about him. Sorry. I cannot stop, not as long as he maintains a presence in our national conscience. A critic of this blog insists that the former Numbskull in Chief has invaded my noggin. Nope. He hasn’t. I am just doing what I should do, which is comment on the nonsensical trash he keeps muttering/blathering/bellowing.

But I want more than anything for this idiot to simply go away.

Be gone! Dammit!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Character still matters

Do you remember a time when Republican politicians recited the mantra that “character matters”?

I do. It became vogue when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton sought to become president in 1992. Republicans got wind of some alleged indiscretions involving the young governor. They whipped it all into a frenzied rally cry that sought to undermine the candidate’s presidential aspirations.

Well, character still matters. Except that Republicans have gone deaf and blind on what the rest of us have seen about a prominent GOP politician. That would be … umm, Donald J. Trump.

The former POTUS is an admitted sexual assailant; an admitted philanderer; he has denigrated prisoners of war, calling them “suckers” and “losers.”

Character, anyone? Yeah, it still matters now just as it did in the early 1990s when Republicans sought to make character an issue in another presidential campaign.

Except that these days the GOP is turning away while one of its own flouts the very institutions he once vowed to preserve and protect. His lack of character also revealed itself when he disparaged a great American, Colin Powell, only hours after the great man’s death.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Let the DOJ make the call

A non-surprising vote occurred tonight.

The U.S. House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection on Capitol Hill voted unanimously to charge former Trump administration policy guru Steve Bannon with contempt of Congress.

The issue goes to the full House. Then it goes to the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia. And then it falls on the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, to pursue a criminal prosecution of  Bannon.

Oh, how I hope DOJ follows through.

The unanimous vote by the House panel is quite satisfying, given that two Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — serve with seven Democrats. So, it’s a bipartisan vote to charge Bannon with a criminal act.

The panel had summoned Bannon to testify. He refused, citing executive privilege. He and the former POTUS, though, weren’t meeting on 1/6 to discuss national public policy matters. They were meeting to ascertain how Donald Trump could overturn the 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won … bigly.

It’s going to pass through the full House. It then will head to DOJ.

Steve Bannon needs to face the music.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

If only he could rise above the bitterness

There are times when one can wish that even the most venal and vile politicians among us can rise to some level of dignity and decorum.

The death of noted statesmen, such as Colin Powell, easily qualifies as a motive to rise above pettiness and petulance. Powell, the nation’s first black secretary of state, died Monday of COVID complications.

Four of the five living former presidents managed to offer heartfelt salutes and tributes to the former general, as did the current president, Joe Biden.

Then came this bit of bullsh** from the 45th president of the United States. Donald Trump issued a brief statement that reads:

“Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!”

There. Isn’t that just the kind of cheap shot, the trash, the rhetorical crap we have come to expect from Trump? Yes. It is.

To think that the King of RINO World would exhibit the chutzpah to call Colin Powell a Republican In Name Only speaks to the utter worthlessness of Donald Trump as a political public figure.

I would say “shame on Trump” … except that he has no shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Contempt of Congress: what now?

2 Comments

Steve Bannon, a one-time key aide to the former president of U.S., is facing contempt of Congress charges from the panel that has summoned him to testify about what he knows regarding 1/6.

Bannon has refused to testify until the courts weigh in on Donald Trump’s contention that he is entitled to presidential executive privilege.

Here is the question I am pondering: What can Congress do to enforce the contempt charge? Answer, as near as I can tell: Not much … just yet.

The Justice Department has to determine whether to bring criminal charges against Bannon, or against any other of the former Trumpkins who are likely to resist the subpoenas that the House select committee has issued.

The panel wants to know the truth behind what occurred within the White House on 1/6. So do many millions of Americans want to know. I am one of them.

Explainer-What’s at stake for Trump allies facing ‘contempt of Congress’? (msn.com)

Bannon is the keeper of plenty of secrets, I am certain. He needs to share them with the nation and the world.

Let me be clear about one more thing. What happened on 1/6 posed a dire threat to the very government we all cherish. The riot on Capitol Hill could have ended far differently than it did had the terrorists been allowed to achieve their mission to “Hang Mike Pence!” and to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election result.

Bannon and his former boss have no right to invoke executive privilege. I hope the DOJ sees it that way, too.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

How can this loser actually win?

1 Comment

A whole array of political brainiacs are offering a chilling bit of news that foreshadows the 2024 Republican Party primary contest.

It is that Donald John Trump, the twice-impeached loser, is the odds-on favorite — as of this moment — to win the GOP nomination.

Let’s ponder that one for just a moment.

For starters, I am not yet convinced he is going to run for POTUS. He might find his sorry rear end indicted on felony charges relating to the 2020 election and his attempts to subvert the results that produced a victory for President Biden.

Setting that aside, are the GOP faithful actually so committed to this idiot to nominate him for a third consecutive election cycle to the presidency? He failed in his single term.

He lied incessantly. He botched the nation’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic; he kept secret from the public information he had learned privately about the severity of the illness. Time and time and time again he said things that contradicted the experts he brought aboard ostensibly to help him do battle against the pandemic.

Trump spoke correctly about becoming a “wartime president,” but then didn’t act on it.

Literally dozens of this guy’s inner circle have been indicted and some have been convicted of illegal activity. Yes, these were among the “best people” he pledged to help him govern.

Are we really going to head down that path yet again with a Republican nominee who cannot tell the truth, who cannot negotiate, who cannot strike deals, who doesn’t know the first thing about governance?

Man, I hope the political intelligentsia is all wrong as it examines the possible future of a once-great and viable political party.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump

Full of ‘opportunities’

1 Comment

My world is chock full of opportunities.

It is, as they said in that “Top Gun” bar scene, a “target-rich environment.”

The biggest, most obvious and most inviting target of my commentary — or barbs, if you wish — continues to be the 45th president of the United States.

I wish it weren’t so. My fondest wish is that he would go away. I wish that someone would indict his oversized backside, put him on trial, score a conviction and then send him to the slammer for the foreseeable future and perhaps beyond.

That ain’t happening, at least not yet.

The former A**hole in Chief continues to make news. That provides people such as me, bloggers and other so-called “pundits,” grist for their commentary.

So I’ll keep blasting away at the ex-Chief Nitwit. The deep breathing he causes me to do keeps my brain oxygenated.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com