Tag Archives: MAGA

national news

Anglo-Saxon caucus?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

In the stunning but not surprising category of news items comes this report out of Washington, D.C.

A group of far right Republican members of the House wants to form a cabal, er, caucus comprising those who want to push forward a political agenda that calls attention to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of some of those who preceded us to these shores.

This group includes some real doozies: QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, accused sex trafficker Matt Gaetz of Florida and the lunatic birther from East Texas, Louie Gohmert.

Why is this so pernicious? As the grandson of immigrants who came to this country in the early 20th century from Greece and Turkey, I am appalled and aghast at a provision in the draft policy statement that declares that “mass immigration” would spoil the “unique culture” built in the United States.

Now, give that a moment’s thought. This nation’s uniqueness, the way I see it, is the built on its welcoming of immigrants from around the world. The Statue of Liberty’s inscription tells immigrants that this nation embraces their arrival.

What in the name of all that is decent are the far right wingers trying to do? I think I know. They are trying to slam the door shut on people of color, on the oppressed and fearful. They want our culture to remain true to some myth that we are an Anglo-Saxon nation first and foremost.

Nothing, not a damn thing, could be farther from that version of the truth about the founding and settlement of this country.

I am heartened to see some push back from GOP congressional leaders on this frightening notion. Can they deliver a kill shot to this right wing idiocy being pushed by the Donald Trump/America First wing of the Republican Party? I am going to hope so.

local news, political news

Trump is no one’s POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Take a gander at this picture.

I don’t know precisely where it was taken. It showed up on my Facebook news feed with a caption that it implies it’s in Dallas.

Eek!

Then someone else posted a note that said Donald Trump 2024 shirts are on sale somewhere in Amarillo. Now that doesn’t entirely surprise me, given the Texas Panhandle’s extreme right-wing tendencies. President Biden carried Dallas County by a handsome margin in 2020. Donald Trump rolled over Biden in Randall and Potter counties — which Amarillo straddles — also by handsome margins.

But … here’s the deal. Donald Trump lost the election. He would lose again were he to run a second time, in my view. I do not believe he is going to run for president again.

Trump has some legal and financial issues with which to contend. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., and Manhattan, N.Y., are breathing down his neck. He has $400 million in debt that is coming due. It’s possible that he will remain blocked from social media platforms on the basis of the Big Lie he keeps spreading about so-called vote fraud in the 2020 election.

He’s already been revealed as a lying fraud. Just maybe lightning will strike, hell will freeze over and the sun will rise in the west one day, and that the Trumpkin Corps of believers will see that their guy is a first-class phony.

medical news

Politics overpowering pandemic battle

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

One of the more astonishing aspects of this fight against the coronavirus pandemic — and there have been so many of them — has been the political tug-of-war over whether to get vaccinated against a disease that has killed 500,000-plus Americans.

On one side we have the MAGA-hat crowd, the folks who continue to stand with an ex-president who spent much of the previous year denying the pandemic was anything to cause worry. They oppose getting vaccinated.

It fell, then, on Dr. Anthony Fauci — the world’s leading infectious disease expert — to implore Donald Trump to encourage his minions to get vaccinated. The ex-president did so and for that I applaud him.

For the life of me I cannot fathom how vaccination protocols have become something to kick around like a proverbial political football.

The evidence of all three U.S. government-approved vaccines’ efficacy is overwhelming. They are helping curb the infection, hospitalization and death rates. Still, we hear reports of individuals declining to get vaccinated because of some lie that refuses to be exterminated that the vaccines aren’t working.

In a related matter, we also hear about individuals refusing to wear masks while doing business with companies that their customers to wear them. Did you see the video of the woman in Galveston getting arrested in a bank because she refused to mask up even though bank policy requires her to do so? She shouts idiotic cliches about her “personal liberty” being infringed by rules aimed at protecting her life and those with whom she comes into contact. Ridiculous!

If there is a sign that the politicization of society has veered out of control, I believe we are seeing it play out in real time … at this very moment. It has to stop!

national news

Another GOP’er to leave

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Hey, who’s counting? OK, I guess I am.

Richard Shelby of Alabama today became the third prominent U.S. Senate Republican to announce he won’t seek re-election in 2022.

He joins Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania as declaring themselves to be lame ducks.

I know what you are thinking: Where is he going with this?

Might they now muster up the courage to vote to convict Donald Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, of exhorting the terrorists to storm into the Senate chamber where the second of Trump’s impeachment trials is about to begin?

Shelby, Portman and Toomey can join GOP Sens. Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and perhaps Susan Collins as possible votes to convict Trump. That leaves only 11 more Republicans to persuade to do the right thing.

Trump can do nothing to those who are leaving public office. Therefore, the threat of reprisal against those politicians is a goner. Just sayin’, man.

national news

If only it was ‘peaceful’ …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Twelve years ago, Republican President George W. Bush opened the door to his successor, a Democrat, who won a hard-fought election to succeed him. Barack Obama began the transition to president of the United States seamlessly and in an orderly fashion.

This time? Another Republican, Donald Trump, lost a re-election fight, also to a Democrat, Joe Biden. His reaction? He slammed the brakes on any semblance of peaceful, orderly and seamlessness on that transition.

President Bush reacts to Obama’s victory in 2008 election – YouTube

President Obama took office with a nation in turmoil. The economy was collapsing. Yes, the tossed a lot of blame on GOP policies and the president. However, George W. Bush set all of that aside to welcome the new president and his family to the White House.

Donald Trump has shown no such class. He claims the election was rigged. He fomented a terrorist attack on the Capitol. Five people died in the melee.

Thus, the new president has taken office with the nation reeling from economic collapse and fighting a worldwide pandemic that has killed nearly a half-million Americans.

The president he defeated is facing a second impeachment trial in the Senate. Members of Congress are expressing outright fear of serving with their colleagues. The anger and outright loathing is palpable among them.

This isn’t how it is supposed to go. Yet this is what we face today as President Biden seeks ways to rid the nation of the pandemic and right our ship of state.

There once was a time when candidates sparred, one of them would win, the loser would dust himself off, call the winner, congratulate him and promise to “work with” him to keep the country moving forward. This most recent election has jumbled that formula for success.

A return of that time-tested practice isn’t going to return soon. It well might eventually. Indeed, the peaceful transition of power — which now sounds cliche — is an essential ingredient for “making America great.” 

national news

Is America ‘great again’ yet?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have some words to share with the MAGA-hatters who might be reading these messages of mine.

We all know what MAGA means. It has become the acronym du jour for “Make America Great Again.”

I have used it a time or two — and that’s about it — as a verb, as in “Let’s all MAGA!” It usually shows up as an adjective to describe those who adhere to the message made infamous by one Donald J. Trump.

Have we done it? Those who subscribe to the MAGA world view, I want to know whether we have “made America great again.”

I was astonished beyond my ability to articulate at the sight of MAGA-hatted rioters plundering the U.S. Capitol Building. Think of the ghastly irony of that, if you have the stomach for it; I am not sure I can quite process it fully.

The MAGA crowd stormed into the Capitol alongside others carrying the flag of traitors, aka the Confederate flag. Think as well of that particular irony. MAGA-hatters profess to want to return America to greatness while ransacking the heart of our democratic system along with those plundering with them under the banner of the flag representing a confederation of states that sought to destroy America. Oh, and why did they want to tear the nation apart? They launched the Civil War to retain their right to own slaves.

Wow, man! How does it feel, MAGA-hatters? Have you accomplished all you set out to do?

national news

Giving thanks for voters’ wisdom

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Allow me a brief moment to mix a bit of politics with the holiday week we’re going to celebrate.

I am giving thanks for the wisdom voters exhibited on Nov. 3 by tossing Donald John Trump out of the White House.

I remained cautiously optimistic that the outcome would turn out as it did, with Joe Biden assuming the title of president-elect. Yes, I had concern that Trump might pull a Houdini-like escape performance by repeating the stunning upset he scored in 2016 to become president.

When the votes came in and were tabulated, my concern was replaced by the satisfaction in realizing that most American voters were able to rectify the mistake that occurred four years ago.

They’re still counting ballots around the country. I look at the running totals almost daily and am heartened by the realization that more than 51 percent of Americans endorsed Joe Biden’s pledge to “restore our nation’s soul.” It needs restoration, to be sure.

I am going to place my faith in the deeds of the new president, that he will be able to bridge the chasm that divides us.

We’re going to give thanks for a lot of things this week. We shall give thanks for living in this great nation, for the liberty granted to us as Americans. We will give thanks for our families and the love that surrounds us and that we give in return.

I also am going to give thanks for the spirit of political redemption that arose on Election Day.

If this post offends you because it mixes partisan politics with the joy of a happy holiday, well … too bad. It’s what I am feeling in my heart this glorious morning.

Have a wonderful day.

national news

The gap is so wide

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am not proud to admit this but the political chasm is widening in our house.

Not between my wife and me. It’s between businesses that support Donald Trump’s re-election and — yep — my wife and me.

We have unofficially decided we cannot do business with people who fly Trump-Pence 2020 flags, or festoon their buildings with MAGA posters, or knowingly give money to the GOP ticket’s presidential campaign.

It’s never come to this in our household.

We have been married for 49 years. We have gone through a whole lot of presidential elections since we tied the knot all those years ago. Yes, we have generally voted alike every four years.

The tenor of these times seems so radically different than ever before. There is so much anger in the tone of the debate and I lay the responsibility for that anger directly at Donald Trump’s feet. I mean, he started off with that dark and foreboding inaugural speech, the one with the sole memorable line about stopping “the American carnage right here and right now.” Trump hasn’t stopped anything. Indeed, the “American carnage” has worsened on Trump’s watch.

With that, I am left to scratch my head and wonder: Who in their right mind can continue to support this guy? We both now have committed to spending our money with businesses that are politically neutral (publicly, at least) or perhaps they will display their support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

It’s come down to this for us in these weird, wacky world of politics. Robert Kennedy used to say that politics is a “noble profession.” It has devolved into something markedly less noble than RFK envisioned.

I blame Donald Trump for that devolution as well and we cannot support businessmen and women who buy into the trash he has delivered.

national news

Hoping for this outcome

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have been roaming this good Earth long enough to know that there ain’t no such thing as perfection in politics.

However, I also know when to search for preferred outcomes and to judge whether they reach a satisfactory level that could pass for virtual perfection.

The race for the U.S. presidency is heading into its stretch run. Here is what I hope happens when they count all the ballots.

Joe Biden should accrue far more than enough Electoral College votes to win election as the 46th president of the United States. He also should roll up a substantial actual vote margin of victory over Donald J. Trump.

What would constitute a suitable finish? Hmm. How about, say, 350 electoral votes for Biden, with the remaining 188 of the them going to Trump; it takes 270 electoral votes to win an election.

Trump managed to win the presidency by eking out a narrow Electoral College victory on the basis of 77,000 votes cast in three states that Barack Obama won twice before Hillary Clinton lost them in 2016. He has sought laughably to translate the 2016 squeaker into a “landslide” victory. It was nothing of the sort.

He now is threatening legal action if Biden collects more votes at the end of the ballot-counting process. I want the former vice president to have so many more ballots in his pile that there can be no doubt as to who won. Would that forestall a Trump legal challenge? Hoo boy! Hard to know.

I am not going to give up, though, on this notion: that Trump well could realize he cannot win a court challenge and that — despite his threats to the contrary — he accepts the results, makes the concession call to Joe Biden, stands before the nation and bids us adieu as he prepares to make his final exit from the Oval Office.

As I noted, there is no such thing as political perfection, but that outcome will seem like nirvana were it to occur.

entertainment news

How does he MAGA?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

How in the world does Donald J. Trump “make America great again” when he spends two hours on a radio talk show?

Yep, the commander in chief went on the air today with Rush “Daddy Dittohhead” Limbaugh. During his time on the radio, Trump managed to tell one of the biggest and most dangerous whoppers of all.

He said we have a “cure” for the COVID-19 virus that felled him and the first lady. Yes, he said that. The drug cocktail he took made him well enough to go back to the White House after spending only 70 hours at Walter Reed Medical Center. It not only did that, he said, but it cured him of the disease.

Cured him?

Medical experts were quick today to declare that there is no “cure” for the coronavirus that has killed 214,000 Americans. However, members of the Trumpkin Corps will accept their guy’s declaration as gospel.

However, I cannot help but wonder yet again: If Donald Trump is going to make America great again, how is he able to spend so much time on the air swapping lies with Rush Limbaugh?