Tag Archives: Joe Biden

medical news

Dr. Fauci’s voice has a certain … lilt

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Surely others have seen and heard what I have seen and heard from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease guru who has become a household name since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What would that be? It would be the lilt in his voice — and were he to stand and stroll down the street a certain spring in his step.

Dr. Fauci now serves as President Biden’s chief medical adviser. He had the same title (in name only) while working in the Donald Trump administration. The difference between then and now is simple and is as clear as it gets: Fauci is able to speak clearly and bluntly to Americans without being challenged by the president of the United States.

Fauci sought to do all of that while working in the Trump administration. He would tell us that mask-wearing saves lives only to be slammed to the mat by Trump, who at one point called Fauci “an idiot.”

These days? He says the same thing and gets an endorsement for his expertise and receives rhetorical backing from President Biden.

When I watch Dr. Fauci being interviewed by news talking heads I see a man who has been liberated from the heavy hand of a president who refused to let his experts speak for an administration led by a functionally ignorant chief executive.

Anthony Fauci has been set free. He is enjoying being able to speak with candor and with the authority he has built brick by brick over many decades studying diseases just like COVID-19.

International news, national news

Russia is not our equal

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump was fond of telling us — perhaps he still is, for that matter — that it “would be nice if we got along with Russia.”

His strategy for making nice with Russia meant sucking up to its strongman, Vladimir Putin. It meant giving Russia a pass when it interfered in our election and denying our own intelligence analysis that said the Russians did interfere. It meant never challenging Russia over reports that it paid Taliban terrorists a bounty for killing Americans on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

Trump’s strategy didn’t work. Putin didn’t take the American president seriously. He played Trump like a fiddle.

President Joe Biden has taken over. He isn’t going to play nice with what is a third-rate military power and a fourth- or maybe fifth-rate economic power.

There can be no mistaking that Russia wanted Trump elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2020. It hacked into our electoral system and sought to undermine the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Why? Because it would get a better deal — from their standpoint — with Donald Trump.

President Biden has made it clear that he intends to hold Russia accountable for the mischief it is making around the world.

Biden is only 102 days into the presidency. He wasn’t granted the courtesy extended usually to new presidents from those they succeed. Donald Trump did not allow his national security team to consult openly and freely with the new POTUS’s team.

I only can presume that President Biden will deal with Russia from his lofty perch as commander in chief of the world’s greatest military and as head of state of the world’s most vibrant economy.

Yes, I get that Russia still has all those nuclear weapons left over from its Soviet Union era. I also know that the doctrine of mutual assured destruction if they chose to use them has kept the rival nations from going, um … “MAD.”

Making nice with Russia? It’s a non-starter. Period.

national news

Now the deficit matters?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Listening to Republican members of Congress bitch about the possibility of running up the federal budget deficit because a Democratic president wants to invest in our infrastructure makes me want to laugh, scream and cry … all at once!

Only now does the ostensible party of fiscal restraint choose to raise its voice against the cost of infrastructure overhaul. Puh-leeze.

President Biden is planning this week to meet with Republican congressional leaders to seek a compromise. Biden wants to spend $2.2 trillion on various projects including infrastructure; the GOP has come back with a $568 billion proposal that focuses more intently on roads, bridges, airports, ship channels … those kinds of things.

Yes, that’s a big gap. The GOP is yammering about deficit spending after approving a big tax break for rich Americans when Donald Trump was president. The tax cut helped run up the deficit and, of course, the national debt.

Where was the outrage then? Hmm. I heard them crickets, man.

I do hope President Biden can bring his immense negotiating skills to bear when he meets with his Republican friends. I also hope he can persuade them of the importance of employing government to work for the people who pay for it.

national news

Why defend myself?

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

We live in strange times these days.

The strangeness was brought to us in full bluster by none other than Donald J. Trump, who had the good luck (for him) of winning the presidency in 2016. He’s out of office now (which is so very good for the rest of us).

However, I find myself having to defend my support of President Biden, especially when I compare him to Trump. To be sure, there really is no way to compare a seasoned, lifetime politician — and I mean that in a positive way — to someone with zero political skill, which I believe is an essential quality one needs in a president.

I also want to make this point once again. Joe Biden was not my first choice to succeed Donald Trump. However, when he emerged from the huge field of Democratic primary contenders, then I was all in. We needed to get rid of Trump. Which we did in November 2020.

President Biden is far from the perfect pol but he’s a damn sight better than the imbecile he defeated. He has served in public life for half a century. Trump has served in public life for four years; the rest of his adulthood he spent enriching himself and trashing other human beings.

To that end, I am comfortable expressing my pro-Biden bias. I know it’s out there for all to see. I make no apologies for it.

As for Trump, the less I can say about him, the better it is for me. Not to mention for the rest of us, given that he will be off our radar.

medical news

Biden masks up … good!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden appears to have made a decision that has some folks wondering … what’s the point?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has loosened its recommendations for mask wearing while the COVID pandemic continues to infect, sicken and kill Americans.

What has been Biden’s response? He and first lady Jill Biden continue to mask up. As The Hill newspaper reported, the first couple was spotted walking toward Marine One with no one else nearby; both of them wore masks.

I believe President Biden is intent on sending a message, which is to employ extreme caution even as infection, hospitalization and death rates continue to decline.

According to The Hill: “I actually think it would do so much good for the president to be modeling at this point the really critical times when people should be wearing a mask, and letting people know here is the benefit of the vaccine: You don’t need to be wearing a mask during these other times,” said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore.

Biden keeps masking despite updated guidance | TheHill

Yes, it is important for the president of the United States to serve as a role model on these matters which, I hasten to point out, can determine whether we live or die.

Compare the current president’s commitment to this role-playing to his immediate predecessor’s flouting of the CDC guidelines — while the pandemic was accelerating at an alarming rate.

Donald Trump refused for months even to acknowledge publicly the severity of the pandemic. He wouldn’t be seen with a mask, offering some ridiculous assertion that it didn’t dignify the office he occupied. The Trumpkin Corps followed their guy’s lead on that specious notion.

We have a new man in the nation’s most exalted office. President Biden has chosen to set a different kind of example. Frankly, it is an example I do not mind watching our president and the first lady setting an example worth emulating.

The stakes remain too high and the consequences are too grim to fall back on phony and false denials.

national news

Biden activates ‘The Club’

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has done something during his first 100 days in office that pleases me greatly, even though I admit it is merely a matter of symbolic outreach.

Biden has reactivated The Presidents Club, the group of men who understand the trials and turmoil associated with the nation’s highest office. He has called on them prior to making key decisions. He has sought their counsel.

Oh, I should mention that one of the members — Donald Trump — is still left out. He will remain an outcast likely for as long as he lives.

You see, Trump tossed aside the symbolism associated with The Presidents Club. He ended up insulting every one of his living predecessors before he left office in January.

President Biden isn’t wired that way. He called President Bush when he announced his decision to end our troop involvement in Afghanistan. He notified President Obama of the same decision. Biden this week paid a visit to President and Mrs. Carter in Atlanta when he visited Georgia to make a pitch for his latest economic stimulus package.

The Presidents’ Club returns with Biden restoring consultations that Trump dismissed – CNNPolitics

Given that Donald Trump is still trying to overturn the 2020 election results and continues to undermine his successor, do not look for Biden to reach out to Trump at any time on any issue that confronts him.

Yes, none of this matters in terms of policy. It does illustrate the value of the wisdom that former presidents bring to the current occupant of the White House.

It also illustrates how President Biden is wired and how he intends to demonstrate his understanding that he might not possess all the answers to all the problems he will face.

national news

Biden sends wall money back to Pentagon

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By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump got his biggest applause while campaigning for election and re-election that he would make Mexico pay for The Wall he would build along our southern border.

Mexico hasn’t paid a nickel for it, nor will it pay. What did Trump do then? He redirected money meant for the Pentagon toward construction of The Wall.

Trump didn’t win re-election. So now the man who replaced him, President Biden, has sent $14 billion in Wall money back to the agency from where it came.

Biden administration to return Trump’s border wall money to Pentagon accounts (msn.com)

Good call, Mr. President/Mr. Commander in Chief.

The money should have stayed at the Pentagon, where Congress appropriated it in the first place. Trump’s decision to divert Pentagon money to construction of The Wall was an act of political desperation, given that there would be no on Earth that Mexico would — or should — pay for a structure that is being erected by our government.

As Roll Call reported: “To build a wall along the southern border, the previous Administration redirected billions of dollars Congress provided for supporting American troops and their families, and for purchasing military vehicles, aircraft, and ships,” the official said in a statement. “The Biden Administration is committed to upholding the rule of law, and properly equipping American troops and caring for their families.”

Congress’s authority to appropriate money must remain intact. It does now that Joe Biden has taken charge of the executive branch of government.

national news

Trump just won’t vanish

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(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s time for me to make an admission.

Try as I have done since Jan. 20 — when Joe Biden took the presidential oath — to rid this blog of anything relating to Donald J. Trump … I just cannot cross that threshold.

I mean, good grief, the ex-president keeps inserting himself into the news. He continues to endorse political candidates; he keeps fomenting the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election; he continues to rile up his base with statements that hint at a possible presidential run in 2024.

Meanwhile, the guy who beat him like a drum in 2020 — President Biden — continues to make policy pronouncements, keeps seeking to work with congressional Republicans despite their claims to the contrary and keeps acting the way presidents are supposed to act.

I am happy to report that these blog posts have dealt with far more than Donald Trump. I just am hoping to eliminate the need to comment on him altogether. When might that occur?

Hmm. Let’s see. Maybe if he gets sentenced to prison for, oh, campaign finance violations or for coercing/bullying state officials to overturn election results. He might disappear if he goes to prison for income tax violations. Or he could vanish if we learn that he isn’t nearly as rich as he kept saying he was when he ran for president in 2016.

I will take a tiny measure of comfort in realizing that the media keep commenting on him, too. He does make “news,” even if the news he makes lacks the impact it had during the four years he defiled the White House as POTUS. The comfort I take in that realization really doesn’t make me feel any better, other than I realize I have company among those of us who comprise what they call the “pundit class.”

One more point: We have Rudy Giuliani — the ex-POTUS’s personal lawyer — who also might face a world of legal hurt. What might happen if prosecutors indict the former NYC mayor and one-time 9/11 hero? He could turn on his client in order to save his own hide.

Yep, that’ll keep Donald Trump in the news, too. It likely will provide this blog with more ammo.

Dang it! I want him to go away. Really. I do!

national news

Biden honors Carter

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden ventured today to Georgia to do two things.

He sought to tout the accomplishments of his first 100 days in office. Biden also paid a visit to one of his first political heroes, Jimmy Carter, the nation’s 39th president.

President and Mrs. Biden visited former President and Mrs. Carter at their home in Plains, Ga.

He said something, though, that I want to echo. “He showed us throughout his entire life what it means to be a public servant,” Biden said of Carter.

President Carter is 96 years of age now. His health keeps him home most of the time. He and his wife of 70-plus years, Rosalynn, have dedicated their lives to advancing the work of the Carter Center in Atlanta and, of course, in the former president’s efforts to build homes for Americans in need for Habitat for Humanity.

Biden was a young U.S. senator in 1976 when he endorsed the former Georgia governor’s bid for the presidency. That endorsement forged a friendship that has lasted all these decades.

At so many levels, President Carter has shown us how to serve others. The former president doesn’t appear intent on forging his own historical niche, but his commitment to serving others is worthy of high honor.

Joe Biden, national news

Biden faces steep hill

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden wants to go big.

Republicans in Congress want to go … nowhere.

Who wins this argument? I’ll go with President Joe Biden every time I get the chance.

Biden spoke to the nation Wednesday night in tones that were alternately vociferous and reassuring. He whispered at times and all but shouted at other times during his hour-plus long speech to a joint session of Congress.

In a certain sense he was preaching to the proverbial choir when we tuned in to watch President Biden. I’ll declare flat out that I want him to succeed. I endorse the essence of his policy platform, which is that he wants to bring government back from the shadows and into the lives of those who need help.

I concede that President Biden is proposing an expensive set of plans to restore this nation’s role as the world leader. Biden and Congress already have agreed to spend $1.9 trillion in COVID relief funds to help Americans harmed in some manner by the pandemic. There is more spending on tap.

However, the intent of that spending is to help all Americans. Yet the president continues to run face-first into resistance from Republicans in Congress who keep insisting that the nation cannot afford to do damn near anything. Joe Biden is having none of that. He tells us that doing nothing is “not an option.”

Here, though, might be the greatest dichotomy between what GOP politicians are doing and what the public favors. Public opinion surveys tell us that American citizens — such as yours truly — favor what Biden wants to do. The GOP pols? They are on the wrong side of public opinion and quite probably on the wrong side of history as they continue to dig in against the president’s agenda.

Are those politicians smarter than the rest of us? Do they know something we don’t know or understand? Hell … no! They do not!

They work for us. Not the other way around!

I wish I could report that government works again now that we have a president who understands how to govern. Good government remains a team sport that requires the executive and legislative branches to put the country first.

One of them — the exec branch — has done so. We’re still waiting on legislators to do their job.