Tag Archives: MAGA

national news

Is America ‘great again’ yet?

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

I have some words to share with the MAGA-hatters who might be reading these messages of mine.

We all know what MAGA means. It has become the acronym du jour for “Make America Great Again.”

I have used it a time or two — and that’s about it — as a verb, as in “Let’s all MAGA!” It usually shows up as an adjective to describe those who adhere to the message made infamous by one Donald J. Trump.

Have we done it? Those who subscribe to the MAGA world view, I want to know whether we have “made America great again.”

I was astonished beyond my ability to articulate at the sight of MAGA-hatted rioters plundering the U.S. Capitol Building. Think of the ghastly irony of that, if you have the stomach for it; I am not sure I can quite process it fully.

The MAGA crowd stormed into the Capitol alongside others carrying the flag of traitors, aka the Confederate flag. Think as well of that particular irony. MAGA-hatters profess to want to return America to greatness while ransacking the heart of our democratic system along with those plundering with them under the banner of the flag representing a confederation of states that sought to destroy America. Oh, and why did they want to tear the nation apart? They launched the Civil War to retain their right to own slaves.

Wow, man! How does it feel, MAGA-hatters? Have you accomplished all you set out to do?

national news

Giving thanks for voters’ wisdom

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By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

Allow me a brief moment to mix a bit of politics with the holiday week we’re going to celebrate.

I am giving thanks for the wisdom voters exhibited on Nov. 3 by tossing Donald John Trump out of the White House.

I remained cautiously optimistic that the outcome would turn out as it did, with Joe Biden assuming the title of president-elect. Yes, I had concern that Trump might pull a Houdini-like escape performance by repeating the stunning upset he scored in 2016 to become president.

When the votes came in and were tabulated, my concern was replaced by the satisfaction in realizing that most American voters were able to rectify the mistake that occurred four years ago.

They’re still counting ballots around the country. I look at the running totals almost daily and am heartened by the realization that more than 51 percent of Americans endorsed Joe Biden’s pledge to “restore our nation’s soul.” It needs restoration, to be sure.

I am going to place my faith in the deeds of the new president, that he will be able to bridge the chasm that divides us.

We’re going to give thanks for a lot of things this week. We shall give thanks for living in this great nation, for the liberty granted to us as Americans. We will give thanks for our families and the love that surrounds us and that we give in return.

I also am going to give thanks for the spirit of political redemption that arose on Election Day.

If this post offends you because it mixes partisan politics with the joy of a happy holiday, well … too bad. It’s what I am feeling in my heart this glorious morning.

Have a wonderful day.

national news

The gap is so wide

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By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

I am not proud to admit this but the political chasm is widening in our house.

Not between my wife and me. It’s between businesses that support Donald Trump’s re-election and — yep — my wife and me.

We have unofficially decided we cannot do business with people who fly Trump-Pence 2020 flags, or festoon their buildings with MAGA posters, or knowingly give money to the GOP ticket’s presidential campaign.

It’s never come to this in our household.

We have been married for 49 years. We have gone through a whole lot of presidential elections since we tied the knot all those years ago. Yes, we have generally voted alike every four years.

The tenor of these times seems so radically different than ever before. There is so much anger in the tone of the debate and I lay the responsibility for that anger directly at Donald Trump’s feet. I mean, he started off with that dark and foreboding inaugural speech, the one with the sole memorable line about stopping “the American carnage right here and right now.” Trump hasn’t stopped anything. Indeed, the “American carnage” has worsened on Trump’s watch.

With that, I am left to scratch my head and wonder: Who in their right mind can continue to support this guy? We both now have committed to spending our money with businesses that are politically neutral (publicly, at least) or perhaps they will display their support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

It’s come down to this for us in these weird, wacky world of politics. Robert Kennedy used to say that politics is a “noble profession.” It has devolved into something markedly less noble than RFK envisioned.

I blame Donald Trump for that devolution as well and we cannot support businessmen and women who buy into the trash he has delivered.

national news

Hoping for this outcome

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

I have been roaming this good Earth long enough to know that there ain’t no such thing as perfection in politics.

However, I also know when to search for preferred outcomes and to judge whether they reach a satisfactory level that could pass for virtual perfection.

The race for the U.S. presidency is heading into its stretch run. Here is what I hope happens when they count all the ballots.

Joe Biden should accrue far more than enough Electoral College votes to win election as the 46th president of the United States. He also should roll up a substantial actual vote margin of victory over Donald J. Trump.

What would constitute a suitable finish? Hmm. How about, say, 350 electoral votes for Biden, with the remaining 188 of the them going to Trump; it takes 270 electoral votes to win an election.

Trump managed to win the presidency by eking out a narrow Electoral College victory on the basis of 77,000 votes cast in three states that Barack Obama won twice before Hillary Clinton lost them in 2016. He has sought laughably to translate the 2016 squeaker into a “landslide” victory. It was nothing of the sort.

He now is threatening legal action if Biden collects more votes at the end of the ballot-counting process. I want the former vice president to have so many more ballots in his pile that there can be no doubt as to who won. Would that forestall a Trump legal challenge? Hoo boy! Hard to know.

I am not going to give up, though, on this notion: that Trump well could realize he cannot win a court challenge and that — despite his threats to the contrary — he accepts the results, makes the concession call to Joe Biden, stands before the nation and bids us adieu as he prepares to make his final exit from the Oval Office.

As I noted, there is no such thing as political perfection, but that outcome will seem like nirvana were it to occur.

entertainment news

How does he MAGA?

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

How in the world does Donald J. Trump “make America great again” when he spends two hours on a radio talk show?

Yep, the commander in chief went on the air today with Rush “Daddy Dittohhead” Limbaugh. During his time on the radio, Trump managed to tell one of the biggest and most dangerous whoppers of all.

He said we have a “cure” for the COVID-19 virus that felled him and the first lady. Yes, he said that. The drug cocktail he took made him well enough to go back to the White House after spending only 70 hours at Walter Reed Medical Center. It not only did that, he said, but it cured him of the disease.

Cured him?

Medical experts were quick today to declare that there is no “cure” for the coronavirus that has killed 214,000 Americans. However, members of the Trumpkin Corps will accept their guy’s declaration as gospel.

However, I cannot help but wonder yet again: If Donald Trump is going to make America great again, how is he able to spend so much time on the air swapping lies with Rush Limbaugh?

national news

Trump: No. 1 threat

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

Donald Trump simply couldn’t settle for just being a national security threat by virtue of his behavior regarding the Russians and North Koreans.

Oh, no. He had to become infected with a potentially fatal virus and then flout medical experts’ guidelines and rules about how to conduct himself. He has become a one-man “super spreader” of the disease that is afflicting more than a dozen of his key White House advisers, members of the U.S. Senate, top officers among his military command staff.

Trump returned to the White House on Monday, shucked the mask he was told to wear, stood and offered a stiff salute while gasping for breath, then went into the White House to mingle with staffers and employees. Did he observe “social distancing”? Hah! Not even …

Now he wants to take part in a presidential encounter with the man who appears poised to defeat him Nov. 3, Joe Biden. That will occur on Oct. 15. Maybe!

I am not at all sure it ought to happen, with Biden and Trump standing/sitting on the same stage. Perhaps they could do a “virtual” confrontation, with the adversaries sitting in their own environments. Whatever.

I am simply flabbergasted that Trump continues to offer the happy talk that he “we have done a tremendous job,” that the virus is “under control,” that it will “disappear like a miracle.”

Let me be crystal clear. Donald Trump is not cured of anything. He continues to expose those around him to a potentially fatal disease. He came out of Walter Reed Medical Center prematurely. I do not believe the White House medical staff that expressed “support” for Trump’s decision to leave the hospital; I was struck by the absence of the word “approve” when discussing the decision to exit the medical center.

Trump is a menace. He said he would listen to the medical experts, but hasn’t exhibited any sort of wisdom in heeding his own advice. He is threatening our national security by ignoring the recommendations provided by the medical experts all around him.

He isn’t making America great with his reckless, feckless behavior.

national news

Trump sows fear in election system

Donald J. Trump’s strategy against Joseph R. Biden is coming into sharper focus each day.

He wants to sow seeds of doubt and fear in the very election system that produced the Greatest Electoral Fluke of All Time in 2016.

He says if Biden wins it will be because the 2020 election will be “rigged.” There you have it, ladies and gentlemen of each county in America. Your work isn’t worth a damn, according to Donald Trump.

These folks all swear an oath to protect and defend the same Constitution that the president swore an oath to protect. They do so at the local election level. They are county clerks and their deputies. They work diligently to ensure free, fair and secure elections.

Trump says a Biden victory — which I consider a blessed event — will be tainted by whom or what? He doesn’t say. Just that it’ll be “rigged.” Recall he said the same thing in 2016 in advance of that election, suggesting that Hillary Clinton was seeking to rig the result. She wasn’t. The result turned into one of the biggest Electoral College shockers in any of our lifetimes.

Trump has ripped another page out of that same playbook by suggesting Joe Biden is seeking to rig an election. In truth, as I see it, Trump is the one who is seeking to rig it. He wants to suppress voter turnout by suppressing mail-in balloting. Intelligence officials already have warned that Russians are working to interfere in the 2020 race just as they did in 2016; they want Trump to win. Why? Trump won’t speak ill of his pal Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump is trading on fear and loathing in a time when the nation needs unity, comity and a search for common ground. Trump won’t acknowledge what it painfully obvious, that Americans are continuing to die from the COVID crisis. Why is that? Because of Trump’s incompetence. It’s as crystal clear as that.

Trump is mounting a major diversion in seeking to cast doubt on the electoral process that is unfolding.

He is a disgrace.

national news

No MAGA hats at Goodyear prompts Trump outrage? Good grief!

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Donald J. Trump has spun into a dizzying maelstrom of political madness.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has declared that employees cannot wear MAGA hats while they’re at work. Yep, MAGA stands for “Make America Great Again,” which was Trump’s signature campaign theme in 2016.

Trump’s response? It was to call for a boycott of Goodyear tires. He did so via Twitter, declaring that there are “better” tires to put on our vehicles than Goodyear.

Except for this little bit of context. Goodyear’s MAGA hat ban is in keeping with its corporate policy banning partisan wardrobe statements that go above and beyond those that call for justice and racial understanding.

So, that means Trump’s boycott call is yet another hysterical overreaction to a non-story, a non-event, a non-controversial private company policy statement — which echoes policies enacted throughout corporate America.

Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency in 2016 while proclaiming that he is a non-politician, that he is a self-made business mogul who “tells it like it is.” He has managed, though, to politicize damn near everything around him, such as the wildly errant Twitter rant against Goodyear.

Oh, and the self-made crap? That was yet another lie!

He is out of control and, dare I say so yet again, totally unfit for the job he wants to keep.

Get him outta there!

national news

You have to watch it to believe it

I am not going to buy into the half-baked notion that Donald Trump is losing his marbles, much like the bullsh** that Trump’s team is peddling against Joe Biden, his presumptive Democratic Party opponent this fall.

Still, when you watch Donald Trump stand before reporters in front of the White House and then listen to his incoherent and incomprehensible riff about this and that, you start to wonder whether the president of the United States is afraid of losing.

I am sensing a serious fear factor weighing on Trump.

I see poll after poll suggest Biden is pulling farther ahead. I am not taking them to the bank just yet. You need to remember that President Hillary Clinton and President Michael Dukakis enjoyed wide margins against their foes in 2016 and in 1988; it didn’t work out well for them.

However, when you watch Trump make virtually no mention of the pandemic that has gripped the world and then launch into a campaign-rally riff at the White House, well … you get the picture, yes?

What’s even more amazing is how little connection all the myriad points he seeks to make have to each other. It all becomes a stream-of-consciousness tirade.

He boasts about what a great job his administration is doing to fight the pandemic, ignoring the 136,000 individuals in this country who have died from COVID-19. A nation with 4 percent of the world’s population has recorded 25 percent of the COVID infections and about the same percentage of deaths from the disease. That is success? Really?

Well, the campaign has begun. No need to wait for the traditional Labor Day kickoff. Trump is in full re-election campaign mode. Joe Biden is ramping up his effort to unseat Trump.

I will remain puzzled and baffled no doubt to the end, though, wondering how in the world Donald Trump can cling to the base of supporters who listen to the same nonsense that flows from this clown’s mouth that I hear.

They hear the Gospel according to The Donald.

I hear so much crap.

Go figure.

national news

Dear America: Happy birthday … hoping for a brighter day

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Dear America … on behalf of millions of others just like me I want to offer an apology.

I am sorry that the president of the United States couldn’t bring himself to say something worthy of the birthday you just celebrated.

Donald Trump stood before Mount Rushmore and then stood on the South Lawn of the White House and delivered two unforgettable speeches. We won’t remember them for the soaring rhetoric they should have contained. We will remember them for the raw anger, the division, the rage they planted.

This isn’t the way presidents usually commemorate your founding, but you knew that already. Presidents most commonly speak to our better angels, appealing to our sense of commonality, our quest to create a “more perfect Union.”

The Donald didn’t do that. He talked about angry mobs, the taking down of statues that “honor” traitors to the nation, generals who fought to overthrow the United States of America. He said those statues are part of “our history.” You bet they are. It is a history full of hate, of oppression, of enslavement of human beings. Donald Trump wants to preserve those monuments, keep them standing in public places. He is angry at those of us — fellow citizens — who protest them.

So he talked at length about that and about made-up assertions of the motives behind the demonstrations we have seen.

I am sorry he didn’t mention except in passing the pandemic that has afflicted so many thousands of American families. It has caused untold grief and misery. It has placed insurmountable burdens on heroic medical personnel. These Americans deserve our eternal gratitude but Trump didn’t see fit to offer it to them.

So, please accept my belated birthday wish along with this sincere hope for you, the nation I love with all my heart and the nation for which I went to war.

My hope is that we can deliver you a gift worthy of all that you represent. It would come in the form of a new president who is able to speak openly to our sense of decency and to, as Joe Biden has said, “restore our soul.”

America, I am forever grateful to have been born in this land. I pledge to do all I can to deliver this gift that you so richly deserve.

Here’s hoping for brighter days ahead.