Tag Archives: Donald Trump

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.

DC riot, national news

Pence shows his wussiness

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I just have to say it out loud and as directly as I can.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is a wuss.

Whatever in the world keeps him from defending himself against scurrilous attacks from the imbecile with whom he was elected to lead this nation is utterly beyond me.

Pence is beginning to return to public life. He and Donald Trump lost their bid for re-election in November 2020. It is widely believed Pence wants to run for president in 2024. It also is thought that Trump might harbor the same ambition. These two men, therefore, could become Republican Party primary opponents.

As he reemerges onto the public stage, Pence sticks to the same strategy he used by Trump’s side: Total fealty (msn.com)

Will that bring any sort of criticism from Pence toward Trump. Not based on what he said this week. What is astounding to me is that Trump trashed Pence on Jan. 6 — the day of the insurrection — for failing to show “courage” because Pence wouldn’t seek to overturn the election results.

The Trumpkin Corps of fanatics followed Trump’s assertions. Many of them stormed the Capitol Building chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” while some of them defecated on the floor of the nation’s government. 

Someone will have to explain to me how a Pence-Trump rivalry — should it develop in the GOP primary for the White House in ’24 — is going to play out if the former VP continues to slobber all over the shoes of the former idiot in chief.

I don’t understand a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m a dunderhead. I simply am baffled beyond belief at the slavish fealty that Mike Pence shows toward the guy who doesn’t return a shred of loyalty to his most loyal suck-up.

national news

Trump just won’t vanish

2 Comments
(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!

International news

Bin Laden mission needed time

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Americans are going to be marking a date over the weekend that should fill them with justifiable pride in the capabilities of our military special forces.

It was on May 1, 2011 that Navy SEALs and CIA commandos raided a compound in Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda and the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attack that had occurred a decade earlier.

Ten years have passed since that raid.

I want to talk briefly here about something that flew out of Donald Trump’s mouth not long after Army Special Forces killed the Islamic State leader on Trump’s watch.

The then-president suggested out loud that the bin Laden raid should have occurred far earlier than it did. Trump was crowing about the success his team had in finding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and dispatching him. Why couldn’t the Special Forces Command do the same with bin Laden, Trump said.

The military commander of that mission was Admiral William McRaven, himself a SEAL and head of the Special Ops Command. It took McRaven’s team time to assemble and analyze all the intelligence it had collected on bin Laden’s location. Indeed, as President Obama said at the time, he wasn’t absolutely sure that bin Laden would be in the compound once the SEALs and the CIA spooks arrived. It was a gamble … but it paid off!

Thus, for Trump to denigrate the great work that anti-terrorism experts from the Bush and Obama administrations did to locate and to ascertain with some degree of certainty that their findings were correct simply went beyond the pale.

I am going to celebrate the victory our forces scored when they eliminated Osama bin Laden. No amount of cheap second-guessing ever would denigrate the courage of the commander in chief to issue the order and the extraordinary skill of the men who executed it.

national news

America’s Mayor falls hard

1 Comment

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The shocking decline in stature of the man once known as America’s Mayor has my head spinning to this day.

Rudy Giuliani once stood tall as a hard-charging federal prosecutor in New York City, then as that city’s mayor, then as a Republican primary presidential candidate.

Time magazine named Giuliani as its Person of the Year in 2001 because of the stout leadership and compassion he exhibited as his city sought to recover from the 9/11 terror attacks.

What the hell happened to this fellow?

FBI agents raided his office and his residence this week looking for evidence in a long-standing investigation by the Southern District of New York into whether he violated lobbying laws while working on behalf of Ukraine. He has tied himself tightly to Donald J. Trump, becoming the ex-president’s personal lawyer and chief apologist.

Giuliani’s conduct during Trump’s two impeachment trials and all the period between them and throughout much of Trump’s term in office has been mind-boggling in the extreme.

Now he is being investigated by a Justice Department agency, which brings me to the most vivid irony of all. Giuliani earned his stripes while heading the Southern District of New York … which now is hot on a trail that many observers believe will lead to an indictment of the one-time America’s Mayor.

State news

Will Cruz return to old form?

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

In the highly unlikely event that Donald J. Trump decides to try once again to be elected president of the United States in 2024, I am left to wonder about how a potential foe might react to the idea of running — once more — against The Donald.

Sen. Ted Cruz wants to become president. The Texas Republican made an effort toward that end in 2016. Along the way he and the eventual GOP nominee Trump clashed repeatedly and harshly.

You remember — yes? — how Cruz of Texas referred to Trump as a “sniveling coward.” A “narcissist the likes of which we’ve never seen.” A “pathological liar.” How he was “amoral” and “unfit” for the office he sought. How about the lies that Trump spread about Cruz’s father allegedly being involved in President Kennedy’s murder? Or that ghastly Twitter image of Heidi Cruz, the wife of the senator? Let’s not forget Trump’s attempt at reviving the birther issue with Cruz, given that he was born in Canada to a woman who is a U.S. citizen, thus giving the youngster instant citizenship in the country he sought to govern as president.

Hey, that was good stuff, man! Then Trump got nominated. Then he got elected!

Cruz managed at that point to remake himself, turning from being one of Trump’s harshest critics to becoming a suck-up par excellence. 

Trump has some serious obstacles standing in front of him were he to actually want to run for POTUS again. Hmm. What might they be? Maybe an indictment or two from prosecutors examining whether he violated campaign finance laws by paying the porn star some hush money regarding a tryst that Trump said didn’t occur. Or there might be an indictment involving his coercing and bullying Georgia election officials into trying to “find” enough votes to turn the state from a Biden win to a Trump victory.

Waiting in the wings are the likes of the Cruz Missile. How in the world does Cruz campaign for president against the former president who alternately vilified and then idolized?

The drama is likely to drive me nuts. Bring it!

national news

Government no longer ‘the problem’?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Ronald W. Reagan stood on the Capitol steps on Jan. 20, 1981 and declared that “government is the problem.”

President Joseph R. Biden stood inside the House chamber on Wednesday night and said, well, something quite different, that government can repair what ails many Americans.

So it is that the “era of big government” is returning to the forefront of American life. I have slightly mixed feelings about that, although I do endorse much of what President Biden wants to bring to the lives of Americans ravaged by a global pandemic and the economic hardship that accompanied it.

I endorse Biden’s call for comprehensive immigration reform. I believe the government needs to make permanent the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program — which lends a hand to those who were brought here illegally as children by their parents.

The nation’s infrastructure as Biden has defined it needs government help. I endorse the president’s plan to tax the wealthiest Americans more to pay for much of his big agenda.

Free community college for every student? Hmm. Not sure about that one.

Climate change poses an existential threat to our national security and, yes, government has a role to play in stemming the impact of the change on our fragile planet.

Joe Biden’s speech Wednesday night wasn’t a stemwinder. It didn’t move Americans to jump into the fight fully. It was, however, far from the dark, forbidding speech that Donald J. Trump gave at his inaugural in 2017.

Although, I do want to say that Biden’s speech did contain at least one reference that might stand the test of time, which is that the Jan. 6 insurrection was the worst such act “since the Civil War.”

President Biden has laid out an aggressive government agenda. He said that inaction is not an option, that Congress must seize the moment and act on behalf of an entire generation.

Oh, I am certain that the Republicans who occupy a hefty minority in both congressional chambers will dig in on their opposition to anything that comes from the Democratic administration. It is their modus operandi.

I stand, though, as one American patriot who welcomes the return of our federal government as a last resort to helping Americans who continue to suffer from a killer virus.

national news

GOP needs to retool itself

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

After every presidential election cycle, the party that loses the contest — particularly if they lose it in a landslide — announces plans to engage in self-examination.

The Republican Party made that declaration after Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, seeking ways to expand its appeal to include more racial minorities. What happened then? Donald Trump became the party nominee in 2016 and he went on to win the White House.

Eek! Then he lost his re-election effort to President Joe Biden. Admittedly, it wasn’t by a landslide. Now, though, the party is having to face its own mortality, given the stranglehold that the Trump cult has placed around the GOP neck.

If ever a political party needed a retooling, it’s the Republican Party of 2021, which now contains two disparate elements: the establishment wing and the Trump wing.

I’ll be brutally honest on this point. I don’t really give a crap-ola which way the GOP tilts. I don’t find either wing of the party to be all that enticing. Of the two wings, I much prefer to deal directly with the establishmentarians among Republicans. The Trumpkins? No way in hell, man!

The GOP, though, faces a struggle the likes of which it hasn’t seen. It reminds me a bit of the internal struggle the Democratic Party went through after its 1972 crushing under President Nixon’s landslide victory. The party sought to remake its image. It produced a maverick nominee four years later, Jimmy Carter, who managed to win the White House. He served for a term then got his headed handed to him by another maverick, GOP nominee Ronald Reagan, who then remade the Republican Party into what it became before Trump hijacked it in 2016.

This much is clear to me: The Republican Party needs to cleanse itself of the toxic formula brewed by Trump and his acolytes if it is going to be taken seriously as a legitimate forced with which Democrats must reckon.

national news

Time and money wasted

1 Comment

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You need to pay careful attention to what I intend to say here, which is that an invaluable amount of time and money is being spent in Arizona to determine whether a free and fair election was conducted, well … freely and fairly.

Spoiler alert: It was conducted fairly and was relatively corruption-free.

That, however, is not dissuading Arizona Republican Party officials from conducting an “audit” of more than 2 million ballots cast in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, which — I hasten to add — voted for Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president in 2020.

Now, to be fair, the Biden margin of victory over Donald J. Trump wasn’t huge. It was only a little more than 45,000 votes out of the total cast in the sprawling county. Will the election audit produce the kind of swing that GOP loons want to occur? Hah! I wouldn’t bet your sturdiest pair of jeans on that happening.

And what do you suppose it would do to the overall Electoral College outcome if by some miracle that hell freezes over and they overturn the election result in Arizona? Not a damn thing. Joe Biden still would be elected president and Donald Trump still would be banished to his posh south Florida resort.

The Arizona Republic reported:

Former President Donald Trump on Friday praised GOP senators in Arizona for their “tireless efforts” to recount millions of Maricopa County ballots, predicting the massive review would produce startling findings.

Despite prior audits — and a host of election lawsuits — failing to turn up evidence of Joe Biden “stealing” the presidency, Trump thanked the lawmakers for “the incredible job they are doing in exposing the large scale voter fraud” in the 2020 election.

Startling findings? Hah! There he goes again, fomenting the Big Lie about phony vote fraud.

Arizona election audit updates: Pause in recount appears off as Democrats won’t post bond (msn.com)

I am going to say this for as long as I can string a cogent thought or two together: There was no rampant vote fraud in the 2020 election.

Think for just a moment about this fact: If you are an election official anywhere in the United States and you know about the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, you are going to work double- and triple-overtime to ensure that the process is squeaky clean.

Does anyone with a half a noodle in their skull believe there was anything approaching the hanky-panky that Trump and his cabal of goons suggest occurred?

Donald Trump talked about the media being the “enemy of the people.” He has it all wrong. The 45th president of the United States is the enemy we all should fear.

Donald Trump

Trump policies? What are they?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Not in a million, a billion, a gazillion years will I ever accept the dubious notion that Donald J. Trump’s followers are enamored of his policies … such as they are.

As a social media acquaintance of mine said this weekend, they were in love with his lies, his hatred of certain ethnic groups, with the manner in which he led them down some garden path.

They are waiting for some signal from their guy, the ex-president, that he’ll be back in the arena. The 2024 presidential election might beckon him.

Wait a second, though. Trump told Fox News that he cannot yet divulge what he intends to do in the future because of “legal issues.” Legal issues? What are they? He said he will decide in due course whether he’ll run for president again.

The legal issues hanging over his noggin likely have to do with the possible criminal indictments that might come from Manhattan (N.Y.) District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., or from Fulton County (Ga.) DA Fani Willis, both of whom are investigating separate but serious criminal complaints leveled against Trump.

As for the Trumpkins awaiting the possible return of their guy, well, they have been snookered into the cult that Trump developed from the moment he declared his 2016 presidential candidacy by declaring that Mexican immigrants were “rapists, murderers and drug dealers” coming to the United States to poison us.

Policies? He cannot speak to any of it.