Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

It’s now Biden the Legislator

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am going to stand firmly and stand tall (to the extent that I can do that) behind my belief that President Biden’s lengthy history as a legislator will serve him well as he seeks to advance his policy agenda.

Joe Biden spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate before being selected to run as vice president with Barack Obama in 2008. The Obama-Biden ticket, of course, won that election and served two successful terms leading the executive branch of government.

Joe Biden, though, was a man of the Senate. He built friendships and alliances across the aisle. He worked well with Republicans as well as with his fellow Democrats.

Now that he is president, he brings that extensive knowledge of (a) the leaders of the legislative branch of government, (b) of how the legislative system works and (c) the language that members of both congressional chambers speak to each other.

That’s not important? Of course it is!

President Biden is the most legislatively accomplished president since, oh, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

This is worth mentioning once again as Joe Biden begins crafting a strategy to enact a massive — and I mean gigantic — infrastructure bill.

To be sure, he will deal with a Republican minority in the House and Senate that is still chapped at having lost their majority and at Biden whipping Donald Trump’s keister in the 2020 election. I am going to retain my faith that President Biden’s legislative experience will hold him in good stead as he moves his agenda forward.

I do like Joe Biden’s style of leadership. He seeks to remind us of the good work that government can do for us. We need help fighting the pandemic. Our economy needs a big push. The federal government is a monstrous, often cumbersome machine. It needs a president who knows which levers to pull, which buttons to push.

We have one on the watch now.

Joe Biden

Run, Joe, run … already?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s re-election campaign — if it happens — has become a talking point among the political class.

A reporter asked Biden at his press conference the other day whether he plans to seek a second term — and whether he expects to run against Donald Trump in 2024.

Sheesh, man! Joe Biden is 78 years old. He is the oldest man ever elected to the presidency. He said in response to the reporter’s question that he believes strongly in “fate,” which I think might be his way of acknowledging his own mortality. I do not wish that for the president, but, well … you know it might go.

Biden’s plan for reelection freezes Democratic field | TheHill

The chatter now involves what a Biden re-election bid does to the Democratic and Republican primary fields.

Let’s see. Donald Trump announced on his first day in office he would seek re-election. Democrats poured onto the primary field in massive numbers; the total hit, what, 22 before they started dropping out. The Hill newspaper thinks a Biden re-election effort could stifle the GOP primary field in 2024, unless the Biden presidency craters between now and then.

I am not going to spend a lot of time wondering or worrying about President Biden’s political future. The political present — a pandemic, immigration, climate change, voting rights — is enough of a challenge for any president.

International news, national news

What constitutes immigration reform?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Some of you, like me who are interested in these things, might be inclined to wonder: What does comprehensive immigration reform look like?

I pose the question in the wake of that visit to the Texas border with Mexico from Republican members of Congress who have decided that the crisis on the border is all President Biden’s fault. They have sniped and snorted over the influx of immigrants fleeing oppression, crime, heartache in Latin America. They are searching for happiness and a new life in the Land of Opportunity and Freedom.

A letter writer to the Dallas Morning News asked of Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, two of the border visitors, whether they were going to stop yapping about Biden’s policies and start offering some comprehensive immigration reform ideas of their own.

What constitutes such reform?

I’ll take a brief stab at it.

  • We ought to establish policies that give a “pathway to citizenship” for those undocumented immigrants who are here already and who have been exposed as front-line workers to the COVID virus. U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif. — the son of immigrants — estimates there are about 5 million out of 11 million undocumented immigrants who fit that description. That’s one idea.
  • Another would be to make the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals a law. Codified it and allow DACA recipients to avoid deportation if they seek citizenship or legal resident status. These individuals were brought here as children — some of them as infants — by their parents who sneaked into the country illegally. Many of the DACA recipients have pursued fruitful careers as U.S. residents. They have excelled academically. They have paid their taxes. They have worked hard. They have raised families of their own.
  • Still another notion would be to reform the Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy of separating children from their parents, which was a hallmark of the Donald Trump administration. I don’t want to see ICE dismantled. It can perform a valuable service in protecting this country. There is plenty of opportunity to make it a more humanely operated agency.
  • And yes, we need to beef up border security.  We don’t need to erect walls along our border. It is too costly and its effectiveness is questionable. This nation has plenty of technological know-how to find and identify those who cross our border in the dead of night. We already are returning many undocumented immigrants already. I have no problem with that policy.

I know this doesn’t cover the whole gambit of immigration reform. I just want to see our elected representatives start dealing forthrightly with some solutions rather than tossing blame at an administration that has made a more “humane” immigration policy its benchmark.

Joe Biden, national news

Let’s go big, Mr. POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden wants to go big on infrastructure repair, renovation and revitalization.

I’m all in.

This gives me a bit of the willies to say this, given the immense amount of money that Biden wants to spend. I realize our debt is mounting. We’re going to run a huge deficit again this fiscal year; given that I am a deficit hawk, that prospect alone gives me the cold sweats.

Here’s the thing: If any president in the past 50-plus years — probably since President Lyndon Baines Johnson left the White House in 1969 — can shepherd legislation through Congress, it is Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

What might happen? Well, he wants to spend, reportedly, $3 trillion to repair roads, highways, bridges, rail lines, ship channels, airports … all of it. Whereas his predecessor, Donald Trump, talked a good game about infrastructure repair, he was, as NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd noted, more interested in “frittering away his days hitting the links and tweet-trashing Bette Midler.”

Opinion | Joe Biden Should Just Give It a Go – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Trump couldn’t legislate his way out of a wet paper bag. President Biden stepped out of the legislative mold into the executive branch of government in 2009 when he became vice president in the Obama administration. Now he is The Man, the chief exec, head of state, head of government, commander in chief. However, he hasn’t forgotten the legislative skills he learned in 36 years serving in the U.S. Senate.

What else might happen? There will be jobs handed out to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have seen their livelihoods vanish in this COVID era. I cannot, and I damn sure won’t try to, predict that all those jobs will generate enough of a tax boost to reduce the deficit and carve into the debt, but we’ve traipsed down this road before.

In 2009, Barack Obama inherited an economy in collapse. He and Vice President Biden managed to persuade Congress to enact an economic relief package that jump-started the economy. They did so over the objection of damn near every Republican this side of Ronald Reagan’s grave. The package worked. It got the job done. The economy revived. Oh, and the deficit whittled its way down to about two-thirds of what it was when Obama and Biden took office.

Can history repeat itself? Maybe it can. My hunch is that President Biden is willing to go big on infrastructure reform.

Go for it, Mr. President.

State news

Texas joins Jim Crow cabal of states … sad

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas aims to join a cabal of states aiming to roll back voting opportunities under the guise of protecting the electoral system against the phony allegation of widespread voter fraud.

President Biden has labeled the effort signed into law in Georgia as “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” He could hurl the same epithet over this way in Texas.

Senate Bill 7 seeks to prohibit drive-through voting, seeks to limit the number of polling places, seeks to prohibit officials from asking voters fill out applications to vote by mail — even if they qualify.

What is going on here? I think I know. We have a Republican-led legislative effort aimed at retaining GOP power in state government for as long as they can despite the seemingly inexorable shift in the demographic makeup in Texas, which is becoming what has been called a “majority minority” state.

Quite soon, ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the state’s voting population. Those voters — big surprise! — tend to vote more Democratic than Republican. Thus, we are witnessing this effort to head off the shift in power.

The Texas Tribune reports:

SB 7, which was offered under the banner of “election integrity,” sailed out of the Republican-dominated Senate State Affairs Committee on a party-line vote and now heads to the full Senate. The bill is a significant piece in a broader legislative effort by Texas Republicans this year to enact sweeping changes to elections in the state that would scale up already restrictive election rules.

In presenting the bill to the committee on Friday, Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes described the legislation as an effort to strike a balance between “maintaining fair and honest elections with the opportunity to exercise one’s right to vote.”

But the bill was met with a chorus of opposition. Advocates for people with disabilities and voting rights tagged the proof of disability requirement as harmful and potentially unlawful. The bill was also widely panned as detrimental to local efforts that would widen access to voting, particularly extended early voting hours and drive-thru voting offered in Harris County in November.

Texas Republicans’ bill to tighten voting rules gets Senate committee OK | The Texas Tribune

This is an insidious trend that bodes grim news for the future of the state if it is allowed to continue.

national news, political news, State news

‘Jim Crow in the 21st century’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has shucked the gloves and donned the brass knuckles to use against Republican Party efforts to suppress voter turnout.

Biden is taking particular umbrage at laws enacted in Georgia and signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp that seeks to restrict voter access to the ballot. Imagine that, if you dare.

One of the more odious aspects of the law is something that utterly boggles my noggin. It makes it a crime — a crime! — to give a voter food or refreshment while he or she is waiting in line to cast a ballot.

President Biden has described the law as “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” I happen to agree with him.

Gov. Kemp is pushing back, not surprisingly.

Kemp in a statement shared with The Hill said the legislation he signed into law Thursday “expands voting access, streamlines vote-counting procedures, and ensures election integrity.”

“There is nothing ‘Jim Crow’ about requiring a photo or state-issued ID to vote by absentee ballot – every Georgia voter must already do so when voting in-person,” he continued.

Kemp fires back at Biden: Nothing ‘Jim Crow’ about Georgia law | TheHill

I don’t have a particular problem with requiring a photo ID to vote. I do have a serious problem with restrictions on early voting, or reducing the number of polling places.

Is it a revision of “Jim Crow,” which is how President Biden describes it? So help me, it looks that way!

It is striking that the Georgia legislature would enact such restrictions immediately after Democrats captured two U.S. Senate seats; one of those Democrats, I hasten to add, happens to be an African-American, Raphael Warnock. Coincidence? As they say: In politics, there is no such thing as coincidence.

Georgia, sadly, isn’t alone. Texas legislators are in the midst of enacting equally restrictive voting laws, not to mention getting ready to redraw congressional boundaries in ways that favor electing Republicans.

President Biden happens in my view to call it correctly with regard to what Georgia is trying to enact.

Let the battle rage on!

media news

No ‘news’ at news conference

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It appears about the only thing the right-wing media can fault from President Biden’s first news conference is his shunning of a Fox News White House reporter.

Biden didn’t call on Fox’s Peter Doocy to ask him a question at the hour-long presser. Some members of the conservative media took that as a direct slam at the right-leaning network.

I just want to remind everyone of the way Donald Trump used to insult mainstream reporters before turning his attention over to Fox reporters at the press events he would conduct.

You might recall how Trump once told CNN reporters that they worked for a “fake news” network or how he told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl that he never would make it as a reporter or how he would chastise media representatives for asking “nasty” questions.

So, the president didn’t give a Fox reporter a chance to ask him something? Big deal. There will be other opportunities.

media news

POTUS vs. media: It’s not warfare

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has brought back what looks to me like the traditional give-and-take between the nation’s chief executive and the men and women who report on it all to the people of this country.

It’s a classic confrontation between the president and the media.

Why is this refreshing? Why even comment on it? Because for four years prior to Biden becoming president the nation witnessed what looked at times like a mortal struggle between the president and the organizations he routinely called “fake news.”

Donald Trump poisoned the traditional relationship, turning it into a ridiculous exhibition of presidential petulance. It fed into the anger that reporters had to have felt as they were berated and ridiculed by Trump, who lied to them, then denigrated them for revealing his lies.

Donald Trump infamously labeled the media the “enemy of the people.” They aren’t. The media comprise professionals who do their level best to report on the administration’s statements and actions.

Today, we witnessed a return to how it used to be and how it likely will remain for the foreseeable future.

The reporters gathered for President Biden’s first news conference as president did not ask softie questions. They pushed him on immigration policies, on the border crisis. They wanted to know how he intended to handle our ongoing military engagement in Afghanistan. They pressed Biden on the pandemic response.

During the Trump years, reporters would ask those kinds of questions and would get snarky responses questioning their integrity, their intelligence, their honesty or even the financial condition of their employer.

Joe Biden has felt the sting of intensely negative media  reporting. It occurred in 1988 when the media report to describe his own life story. It happened again when his second presidential campaign flamed out in 2008. Even in the early months of the 2020, the media reported that Biden was nothing more than political road kill after his dismal Democratic Party primary finishes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

The media report on these matters. Joe Biden knows it. He gets it. He lives with it.

Now, as President Biden, he will continue to be examined critically by the media. As he demonstrated at his presser today, the president understands the traditional role the media play. It is an essential part of the greatness imbued in our democracy and our nation.

national news

Don’t know about a GOP in the future?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden said today isn’t sure there will even be a Republican Party in existence by the time 2024 rolls around.

I’ve got a flash for him: I believe the GOP will exist in some form.

It is possible — if not probable — that it won’t resemble the Republican Party with which he worked as a U.S. senator and as vice president.

The GOP that Biden knows was able at times to work with Democrats, to find common ground. Republicans knew how to legislate, as does Biden.

The cult of personality that has replaced the once-great political party is, well, something quite different.

It will call itself the Republican Party, but it likely will be a “Republican Party In Name Only.”

national news

Crisis requires urgent response

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden can dance around the use of certain words all he wants, but what he shouldn’t deny in his gut is the existence of a “crisis” on our southern border.

He used the word “thousands” today when describing the influx of immigrants from Latin America into the United States. He did not use the word “crisis” to describe what is happening there. However, that is what it is.

He said during his press conference day that more immigrants arrived at our southern border at a comparable period during the final year of the Donald Trump administration than so far during the Biden administration. He also said immigration officers are turning back the “overwhelming majority” of those who are fleeing their home countries.

As an American observer of these matters, though, I just grow weary of hearing politicians and their spokesmen and women shy away from what we all know to be true. The Biden administration has a crisis on its hands with regard to unaccompanied minors seeking entry into the United States. They need to call it what it is, not hide behind terms such as “challenge,” which is what press secretary Jen Psaki did the other day after letting slip that the administration is dealing with a “crisis” on the border.

It reminds me in a perverse way of how the Trump administration kept downplaying the severity of the coronavirus pandemic that began killing Americans each day. The docs called it a grave problem. Meanwhile, Donald Trump refused to acknowledge the brutal truth.

There’s a bit of that occurring now as President Biden seeks to dress up what is happening now. He is dealing with a crisis and he should call it what we all know to be occurring.