Tag Archives: Joe Biden

International news

Tension with Russia, China mount? Imagine that

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Who would have thought that two nations competing with the United States of America are getting their dander up over the words coming from the new U.S. president?

Too bad … for them.

President Biden has acknowledged that Russian despot Vladimir Putin is a killer, prompting the Russians to call their U.S. ambassador back to the Kremlin. Biden also is working with our allies to get China to change the way it treats dissidents in its country, prompting the People’s Republic to stiffen its back as well.

I want there to be peaceful relations with both countries. I also want the United States to act like the powerhouse nation it is, not roll over and concede matters to Russia and China, which happened all too often during the Trump administration.

Biden has pledged to make Russia pay for interfering in our elections and for its assorted other misdeeds, such as reportedly paying bounties for Americans killed on the Afghanistan battlefield. Donald Trump never even brought that subject up with Putin, as Trump himself has admitted. That must change and by all accounts, it has done so.

Russia, China tensions rise with White House  | TheHill

As for China, I also want President Biden to talk openly about human rights abuses, which the PRC is infamous for committing against its citizens. If the leaders in Beijing don’t like it, well … that’s just too damn bad.

Russians might pull their envoy to the U.S.? | High Plains Blogger

The United States has sufficient alliances around the world with nations that are able to back us up and are capable enough to withstand challenges from Russia and China.

I welcome the tougher talk coming from President Biden. After all, we are big dog on the block.

Joe Biden, national news

Comforters in chief weigh in

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are getting a crash course in the unspecified role the leaders of our nation must play … and it is coming in a major hurry.

Eight people died in a mass shooting in Atlanta this week. Six of the victims were Asian-Americans; the massacre occurred in three Asian-owned businesses. Police arrested a suspect, who told the cops he wasn’t driven by race, but instead by some sort of “sex addiction.”

Biden and Harris ventured quickly to Atlanta to offer words of comfort and they vowed to pursue justice heavily and with full force.

We now have an attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has hands-on experience dealing with domestic terrorism, having led an investigation into the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

None of us should wish any more of these calls to duty for the POTUS and VPOTUS. However, should the calls come — and they most certainly will — I believe we can be assured that President Biden and Vice President Harris will be up to the task.

Joe Biden possesses a remarkable well-spring of empathy that comes from his own intensely personal loss — of his first wife and infant daughter and of his adult son. Kamala Harris is the first person of Asian descent to serve as VP, so she feels the pain being inflicted on other Asian-Americans by nimrods who blame them for a virus that just so happened to have been discovered in China.

They are the comforters in chief. I am heartened that the know how to perform the role that has been thrust upon them.

national news

Here comes the POTUS ‘meme’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Wait for it, everyone.

President Biden was running up the stairs to step aboard Air Force One when he stumbled a bit. Then he did it twice more.

Did the president fall on his face? Did he topple onto the steps? No. He didn’t. He got up. Walked the rest of the way. Stood for a moment at the door and snapped a salute to the military honor guard that awaited him. Then he walked into the massive jet and flew off to Atlanta, where he offered words of comfort and support to a community shaken by the massacre that killed eight people.

What, then, awaits us? It’ll be the endless string of social media memes that poke fun at the president.

Hey, I am commenting on it with this blog post, which I suppose tells you that it kind of interests me, too.

I just don’t want to see President Biden lampooned the way, uh, President Ford was many decades ago because he took a nasty fall while descending the steps of Air Force One.

It’s yet another sign of the times. Mr. President, get used to it.

national news

He won’t run again?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Under normal circumstances, I might not place too much stock in what a university professor predicts for our nation’s political future.

Then again, any prediction involving Donald John Trump ought to get our attention. It gets mine for sure.

Allan Lichtman has predicted the winner of every presidential election seemingly since The Flood. He now says that Trump won’t run for the Republican Party presidential nomination nor will he run as a third-party candidate in 2024. He also says President Biden likely will run for re-election next time despite the fact that he will be 82 years of age were he to take office for a second term.

Lichtman is an American University political historian. He said Trump would win in 2016 despite every pundits’ prediction that Hillary Clinton would win in a breeze. Then the bottom fell out of Trump’s term and Biden won handily, which Lichtman saw coming as well.

As for the ex-president’s future, Lichtman doesn’t see it bearing much political fruit. And as for Biden’s future, that remains to be seen as well, given all that can go wrong between now and, say, the end of the 2022 midterm election.

Still, I am going to cling to the hope that Professor Lichtman’s prognostication skills hold up and that Trump really and truly is gone forever from the nation’s political scene.

Trump well might be indicted for campaign finance fraud and for coercing Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn a statewide election that went to Joe Biden in 2020.

As the Miami Herald reports: Worse for Trump is that, “He’s got $400 million-plus in loans coming due. His brand is failing. His businesses are failing. He has a huge IRS audit. He doesn’t hold office anymore. He’s lost his Twitter feed,” Lichtman told me. That’s a lot of baggage for somebody to run for president, he added.

Professor who’s predicted presidential winners since ’80s says Trump won’t be a candidate in 2024. He’s probably right | Opinion (yahoo.com)

Here’s hoping Trump’s fortunes continue to crater.

medical news

Welcome, Secretary Becerra … now, get to work

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Xavier Becerra is going to do just fine as the nation’s newest secretary of health and human services.

He takes an otherwise obscure Cabinet post in a time of a national medical crisis. The pandemic is still around.

The 50-49 U.S. Senate vote to confirm came after some Senate Republicans bitched that the former California congressman and state attorney general lacks medical training. He isn’t a doctor, some of them said, which makes him “unqualified” for the HHS job.

What an utter crock of dookey!

Alex Azar was a drug company executive who preceded Becerra in this job. Was he qualified for the job?

GOP lawmakers are getting pretty damn clumsy in hoisting up these straw man arguments. Ben Carson became head of housing and urban development after spending a career as a renowned brain surgeon. Betsy DeVos led the education department despite having no hands-on experience with public education. Rex Tillerson served as secretary of state even though he earned his millions running a giant oil company. These are just four examples of Cabinet picks endorsed by Republicans during the Trump administration.

So now they’re holding President Biden’s HHS pick to a higher standard?

I want to reiterate something about Becerra: He served in Congress when the Obama administration sought to approve the Affordable Care Act. Then-Rep. Becerra played a key role in writing that legislation.

So, spare me the “he ain’t a doc” argument.

The man is qualified. He will do well in his new role leading the Department of Health and Human Services.

Let’s get busy, Mr. Secretary.

International news

Abbott looks for immigration scapegoat

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was looking for someone to blame for the immigration crisis that is building along our southern border.

So he found one. You’re it, President Biden.

Abbott came to Dallas today to blame Biden for the influx of unaccompanied children who are entering the state. He said the president’s immigration policies are “enticing” Latin Americans to enter the United States illegally.

Oh, but wait. President Biden has said categorically — in plain English — that those people shouldn’t come here. “Don’t come,” Biden told ABC News this week, adding that critics are blasting him because he’s a “good guy” who will treat immigrants more humanely than Donald Trump ever did.

As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports: “I can say quite clearly, don’t come over,” Biden said, noting that the administration is setting up a process for applying for asylum in place. “So don’t leave your town, or city or community.”

When it comes to children crossing he border, Biden said most are 16 and 17. He advocated for trying to connect the minors with an adult contact in the U.S.

Greg Abbott decries immigration under Biden while in Dallas | Fort Worth Star-Telegram (star-telegram.com)

None of that stops Gov. Abbott from levying heavy criticism on President Biden.

Yes, the child immigration problem has worsened. I get it. What is lost on me is what precisely the Biden administration is doing to lure these children into the country.

My request for Gov. Abbott would be to cool down the anti-Biden rhetoric and spend more of his waking energy on coming up with solutions he can implement along with whatever the feds intend to do.

And please, governor, spare me the “open borders” canard.

International news

Yep, Putin is a ‘killer’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has hit an important reset button.

It’s the one that calibrates this nation’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, the one-time chief spook who governs Russia.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos this week asked Biden directly, “Is he a killer?” The president answered, “Mm-hm. I do.” So, with that we well might witness a new era of competition between the leaders of two former Cold War adversaries, rather than a relationship in which Putin seemingly called all the shots and the man who served as our president marched to Putin’s cadence.

The ABC interview with President Biden came at a fortuitous time, as Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines released declassified findings that showed how hard Russia worked to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

The good news? The DNI’s findings have determined that the Russians failed in their effort to re-elect Donald Trump. The election was carried off without foreign interference, the report said.

What happens now?

President Biden said Putin is going to “pay” for the misbehavior in which he engages. Biden said he knows Putin “fairly well” and that he once told Putin that he looked into his eyes and didn’t see his soul, to which — according to the president — Putin responded that “now we understand each other.”

I am not willing to support a buddy-buddy friendship between our president and the Russian despot/strongman. Donald Trump simply could not bring himself to speak critically of Putin, seemingly believing that overt criticism held too many risks for this nation.

Sigh. What the ex-president never appeared to grasp is the reality that Russia is a third-rate economic power and that — beyond its vast nuclear arsenal — it is a relatively feckless military power as well. The United States truly is the world’s remaining military superpower and our economic heft is far greater than anything that Russia or Putin can imagine.

Donald Trump operated from a position of weakness with regard to Putin. Joe Biden intends to flex our economic and military muscle and appears set to remind Vladimir Putin that he no longer is dealing with a patsy who is working in the White House.

national news

Asian-Americans under attack!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What the hell is happening to this country?

The latest victims of hatred now belong to a group of people of Asian descent. We are witnessing a hideous outgrowth of our national fight against a killer virus.

The coronavirus had its beginning in China, or so we have been told. It spread around the world. It entered the United States either in late 2019 or early 2020.

To worsen it, we heard our nation’s president refer continually to the disease as the “China virus,” or making mocking references to something he would call the “kung flu.”

Have we heard anything from the now former president urging Americans to stop the attacks on Asian-Americans? Has Donald Trump raised a single objection to what is happening throughout the nation he once led as its president? No! He has said nothing.

Individuals are being captured, jailed and prosecuted for hate crimes against Asian-Americans. And why? Because they are being vilified only because a virus took root in a foreign land.

President Biden has condemned the hate crime wave. However, the hate crime perps aren’t listening to the current president; they cling to the rhetoric from the man he defeated in 2020. The MAGA mob needs to hear this condemnation from Donald Trump. Tragically, Trump doesn’t appear wired to say what he must to those who are attacking elderly people, inflicting physical harm or bullying individuals over social media.

This terrible spike in hate crimes against Asian-Americans is no way to “make America great again.”

national news

Trump stain will last a good while

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump will be remembered ultimately as a failed president, one who damaged the institutions of our democracy and someone who came dangerously close to destroying the fabric of our republic.

He called himself a “consequential” president. He was all of that. And more.

Thus, his imprint will be difficult to erase from what he left behind.

I say all this because his rhetoric still resonates with so many Americans. Many millions of them voted to return him for a second term as president. Many millions more, though, voted to elect Joe Biden as president in 2020. I was among the latter category of voters, as if you didn’t know it already.

Trump’s followers continue to cast doubt on President Biden’s election, fueled by Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that he lost fair and square to someone who outsmarted and outcampaigned him.

The near-destruction of our government, of course, occurred on Jan. 6 with the insurrection provoked by Trump.

I cannot yet identify what will be the overarching legacy that historians will determine is Trump’s most, um, significant imprint.

It might be the riot on Jan. 6; it could be the terrible spike in race-related hate crimes that occurred on his watch; it might be the fraying of alliances around the world with nations that used to depend on the U.S.’s power and influence.

My personal “favorite” ought to be the mishandling of the pandemic that exploded on the world in late 2019. Trump lied about the misery that awaited us, despite knowing that the pandemic would do the damage it has done … and is still doing!

To be sure, Trump will tout the three justices he selected to the U.S. Supreme Court. I don’t begrudge the fact that Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett sit on the court. Elections do have consequences and the 2016 election installed a president who sought to shift the court dramatically to the right. It remains to be seen, though, just how far right the court will tilt over time.

Donald Trump is gone from the White House. My sense — and certainly my hope — is that he never darkens the door of my house ever again. He is not forgotten. Wiping away the stain left by a consequential presidency will take time.

national news

Lesson learned from post-ACA debacle

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden, or more likely his White House team, has learned the lesson from an earlier legislative triumph that turned into a political debacle.

When Biden served as vice president in the Obama administration, he and President Obama’s team ramrodded through Congress a monumental legislative achievement: the Affordable Care Act. Biden famously whispered in Obama’s ear that its enactment was a “big f***ing deal.” And it was.

Obama then failed to sell the benefits of the ACA to the public. What happened then? Republicans took control of Congress in the 2010 midterm election, an event that President Obama described as a “shellacking.”

Fast-forward to this year. Biden has scored another huge victory with a massive $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. Its aim is to help Americans suffering economically from the pandemic that still grips the nation.

But … the president, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses are fanning out for as long as it takes to talk directly to Americans about why this package also is a big … deal. They want to avoid the thumping that President Obama took after scoring a big win with the ACA. The 2022 midterms are coming up in short order.

I wish them well.