Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Social media ‘war’ to end?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The thought occurs to me that President Biden’s election in 2020 has produced an anticipated but highly underreported positive effect.

During the term of Donald J. Trump, there appeared — anecdotally, at least — to be a serious spike in destroyed friendships and other relationships among longtime friends and significant others.

I lost a few friends during the past four years over intense political differences. I am not proud of whatever I might have contributed to those falling-outs.

Trump is gone from the White House. Probably forever. Joe Biden’s term has begun and I am going to suggest right here that we might see a serious leveling off of the kind of animus we witnessed or heard about during Trump’s term as president.

That is a good thing. Don’t you think?

President Biden is a student of the school that suggests that political adversaries need not be enemies. Trump didn’t operate at that level. He seemingly has few political friends beyond the cultists who pledge that goofy fealty to the man. But, oh brother, he has developed more than his fair share of political enemies. Trump also has dished out the enemy label as well.

Biden rolls differently. He cultivated a reputation as a U.S. senator who was able to reach across to Republicans. He brought those decades of Senate experience to the White House as vice president in the Obama administration.

My strong sense is that as president, Joe Biden will soothe the roiling waters that have swamped friendships and spoiled many family dinners across the land. I cannot presume that would be his strategy. It’s just an effect of the kind of leadership skill he has demonstrated over his many years in public service.

Do I expect a restoration of my lost friendships? I am not holding my breath. I do expect there to be a diminution of the friendship fracturing moving ahead during the presidency of Joe Biden.

national news

Mistake-free presidency: out of the question

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A bit of clarity is in order.

Many of you who read this blog might have presumed that I expect President Biden’s term in office to go without hiccups, missteps, mistakes. You would be wrong.

I do not expect perfection from the president. All I demand of him should be that he own his mistakes when they occur and he is able to understand that they, indeed, are mistakes. It is a quality we did not see in the man who preceded Biden in the nation’s highest office.

Donald Trump was incapable of owning a mistake. A misstatement? That was even more out of the question! He never admitted lying to us … about anything!

President Biden has been in office for a little more than 50 days. By my count, he’s made one semi-serious goof: He declined to issue sanctions against the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman, for ordering the ghastly murder of U.S. journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

There will be more errors. Joe Biden is as human as the rest of us, which of course goes without even mentioning.

I am not setting the bar too high for President Biden. Nor should anyone who expects honesty and truth-telling from our president.

He’s already scored a big legislative victory in getting congressional Democrats to hang together in approving a $1.9 trillion relief bill aimed at helping Americans survive the COVID pandemic. Next up? It appears to be a huge bill to improve our infrastructure: roads, bridges, airports, rail lines.

Donald Trump talked a great deal during his term about improving infrastructure, but he never delivered the goods. Why not? Because he did not have a lick of political/legislative/government experience when he became president.

President Biden cannot claim inexperience as his fallback in the event of failure. He served 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president in the Obama administration. Now, whether he succeeds in pushing infrastructure improvements over the finish line will depend on whether he brings his vast experience to bear.

If he does, great! If he doesn’t, he’ll need to tell us why he failed.

I expect that level of honesty from our president and I remain hopeful we’re going to get it from Joseph R. Biden.

economic news

POTUS keeps name off checks

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It is worth asking, I suppose, whether any American who receives a COVID-19 relief check from the U.S. Treasury is going to wonder why it lacks the name of the president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden.

I know the answer. No one is going to care whether President Biden’s name is on the check. Any more than Americans cared that Donald J. Trump’s name was affixed to the earlier round of relief checks that circulated.

Yet, the former president made a big deal out of ensuring that his name appeared on them. He wanted Americans to see that he was responsible for the help that arrived in their bank accounts or in their mail boxes.

Except that Donald Trump played virtually no role in negotiating the deal that helped millions of Americans.

His successor, Joe Biden, did play a role in crafting this current round of relief. However, his name will be nowhere on the payments.

That’s how collaborative government is supposed to work.

national news

Keep talking, GOP hypocrites

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The checks are in the mail — so to speak.

At least a good number of “checks” are showing up this weekend in Americans’ bank accounts, thanks to President Biden and his Democratic Party allies in Congress, who worked to enact the COVID relief package over the strenuous objections of their Republican “friends” and colleagues.

But wait a minute.

Now comes word from around the country that Republican members of the House and the Senate are trying to take credit for something they opposed. I hear, for instance, that Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, one of the 50 Senate GOP “no” on the relief package, is heralding the benefit it will have on education in his state.

Yeah, keep talking Sen. Wicker. The voters in Mississippi ought to be wise to what’s up with him.

This kind of doublespeak occurs from time to time. Lawmakers who find themselves on the wrong side of public opinion look for ways to weasel their way into voters’ good graces. It turns out the COVID relief package totaling $1.9 trillion is quite popular with the masses out here. Eighty-plus percent of Democrats favor it and a slim majority of — gulp! — Republican voters look kindly on the government relief effort.

None of that swayed the GOP cultists in Congress to sign on.

However, here they are, trying to glom onto the benefits being sent out en masse to those who have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. They have lost their jobs, not to mention lost their loved ones, to the disease. The package provides unemployment relief for the next several months and seeks to lessen the misery that has befallen so many millions of us.

What’s more, President Biden spoke to us the other evening and implored Americans to help in steering the nation away from the effects of the virus. “I need you,” he implored, which I consider to be a marvelous about-face from the “I, alone, can fix it” mentality offered by Donald John Trump.

However, don’t be fooled by the GOP fools who are trying to hoodwink Americans into thinking they played some role in bringing this relief to beleaguered pandemic victims.

national news

Ex-Presidents Club excludes Trump

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Imagine that the world’s most exclusive club — the men who have served as presidents of the United States — would erect a tree house to have their meetings.

I can picture them nailing a sign on the door that reads: No Soreheads Allowed. Or, how about No Seditionists Allowed?

Well, you get my point, I reckon.

The ex-presidents club now contains four men who’ve served in the nation’s highest office. The actual number of former POTUSes, though, is five. The most recent ex-president, Donald J. Trump, is likely to be permanently excluded from club meetings.

Former Presidents Obama, Clinton, Bush and Carter all have something in common that appears to be missing in Donald Trump. They love this country more than they love themselves. They also value the office to which they were elected.

Trump took office in January 2017 and immediately denigrated the service of all his predecessors. He spent his entire four years in office engaging in the type of self-aggrandizement that was the hallmark of his entire professional/adult life prior to running for public office.

Then came the climax of the hideous example he set. That was when he refused to accept that President Biden defeated him in 2020 and then incited the insurrection that erupted on the Sixth of January, causing the House of Representatives to impeach him for a second time.

The four active members of the Ex-Presidents Club — along with their wives — took part in a public service announcement touting the COVID relief legislation that Joe Biden managed to get approved through Congress. Donald and Melania Trump were nowhere to be seen or heard.

Don’t misconstrue my thoughts. I don’t give a rat’s a** about Donald Trump. I just mention all this because of the post-presidential scorn he is going to experience. It is unprecedented and to my way of understanding Donald Trump, there will be no way on Earth that he ever will redeem his shattered legacy.

It’s all fine with me.

Good fu**ing riddance … Donald!

crime news

Will they still follow ‘our president’?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s see how this plays out.

Many of the rioters/terrorists on Jan. 6 looked into TV cameras and said they merely were doing what “our president” wanted them to do, which was to storm Capitol Hill, threaten to kill the vice president and commit an act of insurrection against the U.S. government.

So, will those individuals now commit to doing what “our president” asks us to do by wearing masks, practice social distancing and follow infectious disease experts’ guidelines and recommendations so we can kill the coronavirus?

Or are they interested only in destroying the nation rather than trying to protect it?

Hey, I’m just askin’ … for a friend.

national news

Thank you, Mr. POTUS, for the empathy

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Mr. President, I am not going to flood your Twitter account with messages like this one, but I do feel the need to send you a direct message of thanks.

I occasionally would type out these missives to your predecessor. He got them, or his staff got them, and likely ignored them. Just tossed ’em in the cyber-trash can.

I heard your speech the other night from the White House and I just want to express my thanks and appreciation for the return of empathy and compassion in our head of state. We’ve all been missing that in the presidency for the past four years, as you no doubt are aware. Indeed, I heard your allusion to the absence of it in your remarks.

We need to hear these kinds of remarks from our president. You know how it goes. You served with a president, Barack Obama, who became a master of comforting a nation in pain. His predecessor, George W. Bush, managed to rally us after that terrible day on 9/11. President Bill Clinton, too, was good at trying to heal a nation grieving over tragic loss. But you know all of that, yes?

The pain we feel today is real and it is lingering. The pandemic is still with us, as you know. Yet you offered some realistic words of optimism, not the shallow happy talk based on nothing but a presidential “hunch” that we got from your immediate predecessor.

I’ll end this note now. Thanks once again for talking to us in a tone of voice that tells me that you actually do care about the people you were elected to lead … and to comfort.

national news

Biden builds a presidency … and burnishes legacy

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Watching Joseph R. Biden Jr. build his presidency is like watching someone come of age in real time.

You see, I’ve been acutely aware of this individual almost since the time I became involved actively in a political campaign on the other side of our vast nation. Biden got elected to the U.S. Senate in Delaware in 1972; while he was celebrating that victory, my friends and I were licking our wounds out west in Oregon while our presidential candidate, George McGovern, was suffering a monstrous landslide defeat at the hands of President Richard Nixon.

Yes, I watched the young senator go through the personal agony of losing his wife and infant daughter in a car crash before he would take office. I watched him assume his senatorial duties and then grow into the job he inherited.

Over the years I became aware of the leadership roles he assumed as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I watched him pontificate incessantly at times during committee hearings. I winced on occasion as he would bloviate past the time allotted to him.

Then I watched him run for president in 1988, only to crash and burn when he was caught copying remarks from a British politician and using them while trying to tell his own life story. The guy I supported that year for the Democratic nomination, Michael Dukakis, would suffer a landslide loss to Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Sigh …

He ran again for president in 2008 and then got thumped by the eventual nominee, Barack H. Obama … who then selected Biden to run with him as vice president.

And now he has won the highest office, grabbed the brass ring.

Hey, I am sitting now in the middle of what they call Flyover Country. I live in Texas, one of the most reliably Republican states in America. My pride in watching Joe Biden ascend to the highest office hasn’t abated one little bit.

It’s almost as if I am watching someone I “grew up with” along the way. I was barely old enough to vote when Joe Biden won his first federal office in 1972; heck, he wasn’t even old enough to assume his Senate seat until he turned 30 two weeks after that election.

Time has marched on. I am proud of Joe Biden, of his tenacity and of the courage he has exhibited while picking himself up after falling short of his aspirations. I believe the setbacks — and, yes, the tragedy — he has endured have prepared Joe Biden well for the challenges that lie ahead.

national news

Senate confirms AG … yes!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The United States finally has a new attorney general … who’s going to serve as the people’s lawyer, not someone who runs political interference for the president of the United States.

Welcome to the fray, Merrick Garland. A weary nation has been waiting for you.

The U.S. Senate voted 70-30 today to confirm Garland. It’s a good news/bad news kind of vote. The good news is that 20 Republicans crossed over to vote for the Democratic president’s nominee; the bad news is that 30 of them stayed on their side of the great divide and voted “no” on a man who is highly regarded as a brilliant and fair-minded legal scholar.

The Texas delegation in the U.S. Senate split on this one: Republican John Cornyn voted to confirm Garland while his fellow GOP colleague, Ted Cruz, voted against. Cruz’s “no” vote, I will venture a guess, likely was cast more out of petulance than principle.

Garland will succeed William Barr, who quit in the final weeks of the Trump administration out of anger over the way Donald Trump conducted himself leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection that Trump incited. The period before that, though, is what troubled so many of us, as Barr acted so much as though he was representing Donald Trump and not the interests of all Americans and the Constitution to which he swore an oath to defend and protect.

I do not believe we are going to have that issue with Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Senate votes to confirm Garland as attorney general | TheHill

This is an important step in the reconstruction of a Justice Department decimated by Donald Trump and his legal eagle minions. Garland pledges to put the people’s interest front and center, that he won’t be bullied or coerced into making political decisions. “I am the United States’s lawyer. I will do everything in my power … to fend off any effort by anyone to make prosecutions or investigations partisan or political in any way,” Garland said during his eight-hour Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.

You know what? I believe him. I also believe he will restore the DOJ to the level of integrity, fairness and toughness that has been its hallmark. Our government needs that guarantee.

State news

Humanity = open borders? Hardly!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has gone full-throated demagogue in his war of words with President Biden.

He accuses Biden of not caring about Americans because his immigration policies are a good bit more humane than those of his presidential predecessor, Donald John Trump.

That is a foolish assertion and Abbott ought to know better. Well, he does know better. It’s not in his political interest, apparently, for him to acknowledge it.

Abbott went to Mission today to announce a program called Operation Lone Star, which aims to ramp up arrests of undocumented immigrants seeking entry into the United States.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott slams President Joe Biden’s immigration policies | The Texas Tribune

What, precisely, did the Biden administration do to incur Abbott’s demagogic wrath? It has sought to enact a more “humane” policy, which has spurred an increase in immigrants trying to crash into the country. As the Texas Tribune reports:

The Biden administration has acknowledged that the increase in migrants coming to the border is, in part, a result of new policies intended to be more humane toward migrants and asylum seekers. That’s especially true of unaccompanied minors, said White House Press Secretary Jenn Psaki.

“Humanity will always be a value,” she said during a press briefing Tuesday. “What we’re really talking about in terms of the people who are being let in are unaccompanied children. That is a policy decision which we made because we felt it was the most humane approach to addressing what are very difficult circumstances in the region.”

Abbott said this, according to the Tribune: “He does not care about Americans. He cares more about people who are not from this country” said Abbott, who spoke in front of a wall of Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles parked near the banks of the Rio Grande in Mission.

Once again, Abbott is tossing out the “open borders” canard. The border isn’t “open,” governor. The presence of border security guards should tell everyone the truth about what is happening on our southern border.