Tag Archives: MAGA

crime news, legal news, national news

‘No-name’ makes history

I would be willing to pay real American money to someone who could prove to me he or she knew who Jack Smith was when Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed him special counsel to examine the charges leveled against Donald J. Trump.

Well, this no-name “tough and dogged” federal prosecutor has made history in a major way by indicting Trump on seven counts related to the ex-POTUS’s squirreling away of classified documents at the end of his term in office.

Roll this around for just a moment. We now have the former commander in chief, the former head of the U.S. government’s executive branch being charged by that very branch of government on felony charges that could put the ex-POTUS in prison for the rest of his miserable life.

The Justice Department’s charges are serious, man. I have no idea what it all means to the political calculus in play as Trump campaigns for the presidency in 2024. The legality, though, is as clear as it gets.

And for crying out loud, spare me the “politicization” argument that is going to come from the MAGA crowd. Trump is going to make this a political case. He is going to accuse DOJ of “election interference.” Imagine, too, the hideously rich irony of Trump claiming election interference … given that he is the King of Election Interference!

Jack Smith has done precisely what Merrick Garland asked of him. He did it with professionalism, steely resolve and a commitment to the rule of law.

He now has become a household name. Who knew?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden, national news

What is Pence talking about?

Listening to former Vice President Mike Pence announce his presidential candidacy, I was struck by the nation he was describing to a roomful of supporters in Iowa.

The United States of America that the former VP was laying out there for us is a nation in decline, that we are angry and afraid of our future, that we’re heading straight to hell.

I was left to wonder: What in the name of truth-telling is Mike Pence talking about?

President Joe Biden inherited an office at a time the nation was suffering from a pandemic that would kill more than a million Americans. We had lost millions of jobs because employers couldn’t do business while fighting the COVID-19 virus. Our allies had lost confidence in our ability to defend them — and ourselves.

As for the pandemic, it’s now essentially whipped. The jobs are coming back by the hundreds of thousands each month. Unemployment remains at historic lows.

Mike Pence talked about how he would defend Ukraine against a war of aggression from the Russians. Did he offer anything different from what Joe Biden has done already? No. He didn’t!

I am not at all clear as to what the former VP would do to restore the nation. Or what he could do.

From my perch here in Collin County, Texas, the nation is functioning well. This is occurring despite the right wing’s best efforts to demonize the left, to attack that thing called “woke,”

I listened to much of Pence’s announcement today, powered through the platitudes and promises to “make America great again.”

However, I will suggest to the Pencekins out there who have swallowed that MAGA swill that America today is greater than it ever has been and that, yep … the best is yet to come.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Rep. Santos: without shame

George Santos is that rare politician who believes he can function as a “normal” elected official despite the enormous baggage he’s lugging around as a result of his lies and deceit.

The first-term Republican congressman from New York is an absolute, hands-down laughingstock. No one can possibly take seriously a single word that flies out of the mouth of this serial liar.

He got elected in 2022 by lying his way into office. Let’s see, he lied about:

His parentage, his professional career, his educational background, his marital status, his family’s connection to the Holocaust and 9/11. Oh, then he is accused of swindling money from someone he knows.

Santos’s constituents elected a mystery man.

Yet he now functions as if he hasn’t a care in the world beyond his duties as a congressman.

Good grief, man!

I don’t even know why I’m getting worked up over this. Dude represents a district far from my home in North Texas. But … he is able to vote on federal laws that affect all of us. I guess that gives me justification to gripe and bitch about this fraud.

Like the man who once sat in the White House, I am left to question every single utterance that flies out of Santos’s mouth.

He is just one of 435 House members. He needs to be shown the door. My hope is that the New York congressional district voters who sent him to D.C. in the first place will wise up when they cast their ballots again next year.

The guy is without shame.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Compromise wins!

President Joe Biden had reason to spike the proverbial football tonight, declaring outright victory in his protracted fight with the right-wingers over the debt ceiling.

He didn’t go there … to his great credit.

Instead, the president used his Oval Office speech tonight to offer congratulations to Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell — in addition to Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jefferies — for putting the good of the country over the wishes of the extremists within their own partisan caucuses.

Biden noted that the deal that ends the debt ceiling discussion for the next two years doesn’t please everyone but it does good for the whole nation.

That is the fuel that makes a representative democracy run, the president noted.

Yes, he took some credit for legislation he has helped push through a deeply divided Congress. And why not? He’s running for re-election and you can rest assured fully that whoever runs against him in 2024 will raise a ruckus over perceived errors the president has made.

I am not enough of a policy nerd to quibble over the specifics of the deal that Biden and McCarthy hammered out. I did fear, however, the consequences of failing to get this deal approved by Congress. They affect me directly: Social Security income, my retirement account and veterans’ protection hit me right in the gut. I did not want to lose any of it.

Thanks to the president and the speaker, I won’t. Neither will millions of other Americans.

Thanks to the president and the speaker for pulling us away from that proverbial cliff.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Economy is strong … period!

How in the world does one deal with the fearmongering on the right wing of the political spectrum that keeps fomenting the lie that our national economy is headed for the crapper?

President Biden keeps seeking to remind us of several undeniable facts: joblessness is at a historic low; new jobs are pouring in; business continues to make astounding profits; inflation is subsiding; the national budget deficit is shrinking; the national debt is receding, too.

It’s falling on deaf ears on the right. The right-wingers are looking for any advantage they can find as they seek to run against the president. They are fomenting yet another lie, that the economy is tanking.

Listen up, folks: The economy is not heading for the tank! The economy is showing remarkable resilience! Its strength is presenting itself almost daily!

I am going to use this blog to try to disabuse those who want to believe the liars that the economy is set to be flushed away.

It is not!

johnkanels_92@hotmail.com

local news

Put ’em on the record!

The vote on whether to approve a debt-ceiling agreement hammered out by President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is going to be an eye-opener, indeed.

We’ll all get to see who among our House members wants to maintain our nation’s “full faith and credit” and which of them is willing to risk sending our nation into default … the result of which would be catastrophic.

I do not use the “c-word” lightly, or cavalierly. Retirement accounts would vanish, interest rates would skyrocket, millions of Americans would lose their jobs.

In other words, the sky would collapse … figuratively, of course.

The fellow who represents my interests is a Republican named Keith Self. He’s a former Collin County judge. He also is a MAGA-leaning, election-denying conspiracist who — I predict — is likely to say “no” to the deal that Biden and McCarthy hammered out.

Why? Because it doesn’t cut enough discretionary spending. Never mind that the president’s proposal cuts the deficit, reduces the national debt, maintains our military strength, keeps faith with climate change actions, raises taxes on the super-rich and seeks to maintain job growth.

There will be a lot of House members on both fringes of the big divide who will vote “no” on this deal.

I look forward to taking names and, to borrow a phrase, kicking some serious booty.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden: big winner on debt deal

I have been reluctant to dish out much praise for the negotiations that produced an increase in the national debt ceiling.

Until now.

I am going to offer a brief word of praise to the Negotiator in Chief, President Joe Biden. The president faced down the MAGA cult among Republicans in Congress and emerged as the big winner in this negotiation that extends the debt ceiling for another two years.

Joe Biden has spent his entire public service career learning how to negotiate with his “friends” in the other party. Thirty-six years in the U.S. Senate, eight years as vice president and now as the head of state/government/commander in chief, he has shown his mettle once again.

I long have understood that good government requires compromise on both sides. President Biden knows it, too. He practices it. He has fine-tuned his compromise skills and he brought them to bear as he haggled with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over a deal that certainly doesn’t please everyone.

You know the saying about the “perfect being the enemy of the good.” The “good” in this case avoids a catastrophe in case the nation were to default on its debt. Perfection for the MAGA gang on the right or the liberal/progressives was out of reach.

Joe Biden knows it. So does Kevin McCarthy.

It just appears to me that President Biden’s skill has won the day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Impeachment reveals GOP fissures

Talk about divisions within a political party, let alone between that party and the other major governing organization.

Texas political observers were treated this past weekend to an up-close and personal look at how sharply divided the Texas Republican Party has become. A significant majority of GOP members in the Texas Legislature voted to impeach Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton on an array of ethical and criminal allegations.

Now comes the fight of Paxton’s political life as he now must stand trial in the GOP-dominated Texas Senate.

When will that trial occur? Beats the cornbread stuffing out of me!

The impeachment vote in the Texas House, frankly, astonished me. I was expecting a closer vote than what came out. The final tally was 121-23, meaning that most House Republicans voted to impeach Paxton. The Texas Tribune reported: About 70% of House Republicans voted Saturday to impeach — 60 of the 85 Republicans in the 150-seat chamber. That included a coalition of center-right and conservative Republicans who defied their party’s far right and heeded the call to protect the state from a public official who had abused his office and power for personal gain.

Ken Paxton impeachment fight exposes deep fissures among Texas Republicans | The Texas Tribune

What does one draw from this stunning outcome? My take is that the Texas Republicans who occupy public office in the Legislature are weary of Paxton’s long list of legal skirmishes, either with the authorities who are probing his conduct or with Paxton seeking to raise hell with Democrats in high places.

The attorney general has done little more during his more than two terms in office than make a spectacle of himself. Thus, we might be witnessing serious fissures within the Texas Republican Party.

Gov. Greg Abbott, another Republican (of course!), needs to call the Texas Senate back to work in advance of the trial that will commence in that legislative chamber. One of the senators who will report for duty is Angela Paxton, the attorney general’s wife. Your blogger (me!) has called already for Sen. Paxton to recuse herself. I hope she heeds my unsolicited advice.

None of that will lessen the divide that will play out as the Senate hears evidence gathered by House Republican investigators into the slew of allegations that have piled up around the attorney general.

As a Texan who is not affiliated with the Republican Party, I am watching all this with a healthy dose of bemusement.

It makes me wonder out loud if Republicans in this state are as incompetent at governing as their national colleagues who gathered at the start of the year and burned through 15 ballots just to elect a speaker of the House.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Compromise = good government

All right, folks, we are witnessing in real time the impact that good government can bring us.

One aspect of good government — in a representative democracy — is that compromise is essential. So, with that we have an agreement in principle to fend off the threat of our nation defaulting on payments to which it is obligated.

It came down to two men, President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, haggling, needling, cajoling and compromising to reach this agreement.

“Everybody won’t like what is the end of the agreement … on both sides,” McCarthy said Saturday morning. “But … at the end of the day I think people should see what that product is before people vote on it.”

McCarthy is going to make the details of the agreement available to House members for 72 hours before casting a vote slated for Wednesday.

Progressives are unhappy. So are conservatives. These are the hardliners on both ends who refuse to accept compromise as an essential element of good government.

I haven’t seen the details of the bill, so I won’t comment on the finished product. My focus with this post is on the method that Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy used to reach this point.

Defaulting on our debt obligations is a non-starter. Both men said so. They proceeded from that point. Default would have produced a catastrophe.

The deal that Biden and McCarthy have reached is good for the next two years. It takes this whole issue off the campaign table for 2024. It is an agreement that in a more perfect world should have been reached without the drama that led to this point.

In the end, good government has won the day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

House acts with stunning efficiency; impeaches Paxton

Just like that, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is out of a job. It might be temporary, or … it could be a permanent removal.

The Texas House of Representatives voted today — overwhelmingly, I must add — to impeach Paxton, a move that removes him from his daily duties as the state’s chief law enforcer.

The vote to accept all 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23, with two members abstaining from a vote.

Wow, man! It’s just the third such impeachment in all of Texas’s history.

I have to say the testimony I heard today — and I didn’t settle in for all of it — had me wondering if the House of Reps would be able to do its job. Some House members argued that the body had too little time to hear all the evidence; they argued for a postponement to hear everything the House General Investigation Committee heard.

Well, at the end, Speaker Dade Phelan announced the vote. It wasn’t even close!

I had wondered in an earlier blog post about whether the Texas Republican legislative caucus would have the courage to impeach a fellow GOPer, or whether it would cower the way congressional Rs did when faced with impeaching a Republican POTUS.

I am so very happy to report that the Texas GOP legislative delegation is made of stern stuff. Most of them went along with the Investigation Committee recommendation to impeach Paxton.

The guy has disgraced his office, the state and those within his party. He has been under felony indictment for securities fraud since he took office. The FBI has been examining other complaints against him. To top it all off, the AG has asked Texas taxpayers to foot the bill on a $3.3 million settlement he reached with lawyers he fired after they blew the whistle on what they allege is extensive criminal behavior.

Uh, Mr. AG? I don’t want to pay a nickel.

Now the attorney general will take his seat in the peanut gallery and wait for a Senate trial that ought to commence fairly soon. The Legislature will adjourn early next week. The Senate will sit as jurors in a trial to determine whether to remove Paxton permanently.

None of this could have happened to a more deserving individual.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com