Tag Archives: Joe Biden

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AG pick vows to take aim at domestic terror

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

America’s greatest enemy well might live, work and play within our own borders.

That potential enemy is going to be the No. 1 focus of the man picked to be the next attorney general. Merrick Garland, a federal judge selected by President Biden to lead the Justice Department, today vowed to battle domestic terrorists wherever they seek to do their evil deeds.

He also vowed to pursue those on extreme left as well as on the extreme right. More to the point, Garland told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that he considers the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill by the riotous mob be the most heinous attack on our government in our nation’s history.

The Wall Street Journal reported: “I think this was the most heinous attack on the democratic processes that I’ve ever seen, and one that I never expected to see in my lifetime,” Judge Garland told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. He added that the current investigation into the riot—which has led to around 250 people facing criminal charges to date—appeared to be “extremely aggressive and perfectly appropriate.”

Merrick Garland Puts Focus on Domestic Extremism (msn.com)

Garland spoke to the Judiciary panel; he is likely to be approved strongly by the committee and confirmed with a significant bipartisan vote by the full Senate. Then he can get to work.

Indeed, there must be plenty of work done. The nation witnessed a horrific attack on our democratic system of government on Jan. 6. The House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump just as he was preparing to leave office a week after the attack. He incited the insurrection, but a Senate trial ended with his acquittal when senators fell 10 votes short of convicting him.

The probe must go on. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared the need for a bipartisan investigation into the events leading up to the attack. Now we hear from the presumptive attorney general, declaring that he considers domestic terrorism to be his top priority. That, too, is welcome news.

What’s more — and this is critical — Garland told senators that he won’t be cowed by political pressure from anyone, including the president.

“I do not plan to be interfered with by anyone. I expect the Justice Department will make its own decisions in this regard,” Judge Garland said. “I would not have taken this job if I thought that politics would have any influence over prosecutions and investigations,” he said.

William Barr made a similar pledge as well, but it didn’t turn out that way while he ran the DOJ. Merrick Garland’s reputation commends him for the task he has been asked to undertake.

Rest assured, there will be plenty of American who are watching to ensure he makes good on his pledge to pursue the truth behind the heinous attack on Capitol Hill.

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Tanden’s budget cred is lacking

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The media and political operatives have focused on Office of Management and Budget director nominee Neera Tanden’s stormy tirades on Twitter while they debate whether the Senate should approve her nomination.

Progressives are giving her a pass for the mean tweets she has put out there; Republicans are simply appalled, aghast and offended that she would be so angry. Actually, the GOP’s faux sensitivity is laughable on its face, given that so many Republican senators were willing to look the other way when Donald Trump was savaging his political foes with some of the most petulant tweets one can imagine coming from a president of the United States.

They are missing what I believe is the essential point over Tanden’s nomination, which is that she isn’t qualified to run OMB.

Tanden is a fierce partisan. I don’t begrudge that part of her background, per se. She also lacks any serious experience managing the kind of agency President Biden has asked of her. She has worked for progressive think tanks. Tanden has worked as an unpaid adviser  to political campaigns.

Her background is shallow. For the life of me I don’t understand what President Biden thinks what kind of experience she brings to the tough work of managing a massive federal budget.

I’ve enjoyed listening to her political commentary in recent years. She and I are on the same political page. She preaches to the proverbial choir when I listen to what she says. I just don’t know if she has the financial chops required to do the job President Biden is asking her to do.

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Put on your ‘Comforter in Chief’ cape, Mr. POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden is coming to Texas to perform one of the unwritten tasks of the job he inherited just a bit more than a month ago.

He is coming as the nation’s Comforter in Chief. I hope he is up to the task that lays before him.

I spent a good deal of emotional capital over the past four years blasting to smithereens Biden’s immediate predecessor’s unwillingness to lend comfort to Americans in trouble. I will spare you any more tirades on that score.

Biden is coming here to survey the damage done by the nasty winter storm that paralyzed so much of the state. You know the drill by now: Power went out, darkening millions of homes; the water supply failed, too, forcing millions of Americans to boil their water before consuming it. Indeed, many Texas communities to this very day still do not have water or their residents are still forced to boil it.

What can the president do in a single visit to a ravaged area? Not much. I am acutely aware that such visits serve mainly to provide the head of state an up-close look at the damage and to enable him to speak to local officials and to their constituents about the path forward.

President Biden is known as a touchy-feely kind of guy. There likely won’t be much hugging or up-close chit-chat between the president and those who are still suffering. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced all of us to keep our distance, even from a president whose presence among us likely will become part of the man’s presidential legacy.

I fully expect President Biden — despite the restrictions he will face — will demonstrate fluency in the language he must use to tell Texans the things they need to get some level of comfort.

It goes with the job.

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Start looking for new OMB boss, Mr. POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Neera Tanden’s status as the next director of the federal Office of Management and Budget suddenly has run into a serious roadblock.

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has said he will oppose her nomination when he gets to vote on it. That means a 50-50 Senate composition puts Tanden’s nomination in serious jeopardy. All of the Senate’s 50 Republicans will oppose her selection; Democratic support stands at 49 votes maximum. Got it? She cannot be confirmed, if the numbers hold up.

To be honest, I was skeptical of her nomination from the get-go … and not because of her fiery Twitter messages that savaged Republican lawmakers. My concern always had been that she is light on budgeting experience. To be candid, I am not clear why President Biden chose her in the first place.

Politico reports: Two early contenders to replace Tanden are Gene Sperling, a two-time director of the National Economic Council, and Ann O’Leary, who just came off a stint serving as California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff, and who was considered a leading alternative to Tanden back in November when Tanden’s nomination was announced, according to people familiar with the matter.

The jockeying to replace Neera Tanden has begun – POLITICO

At one level it is laughable on its face that GOP senators would be angry because of her partisan Twitter messages, given that the 45th president of the United States used that social medium to inflict serious insult and damage to his foes.

Even without all of that, Tanden’s pick is suspect, given that she is a hard-core partisan and someone with little experience implementing budget policy on a scale required by the OMB director.

“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin, a moderate Democrat, said in a statement. “For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”

Whatever. It looks to me as though her Twitter activity should be the least of the issues that work against her.

President Biden ought to start looking seriously for someone with actual budgetary chops to handle a daunting task.

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President for ‘all Americans’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s campaign pledge to be “president for all Americans, not just those who voted” for him sprang to mind as he made a major disaster declaration for Texas.

Why is that a big — or even a medium deal? It’s because his predecessor at times politicized these decisions, taking aim at officials in states that didn’t vote for him in the 2016 election; the California wildfire disaster comes immediately to mind.

Biden approves major disaster declaration for Texas: FEMA (msn.com)

President Biden has told the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pull out all the stops to help Texas recover from the monstrous winter blast that knocked power out for millions of Texans and continues to cause major water-quality problems for thousands of us.

It’s interesting, too, that the White House has been working closely and feverishly with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who was one of those who refused to recognize initially that Joe Biden, a card-carrying Democrat, was really and truly elected president in 2020.

None of that matters one damn bit … not to Gov. Abbott now or to the president.

Presidents do govern the entire country and must answer to all Americans. They also must set aside partisan differences when Americans are suffering.

As the saying goes: We live in the United States of America.

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‘America is back’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has made it abundantly clear that the nation he was elected to lead is going to return to the world stage.

There will no more talk of “putting America first” at the expense of our nation’s international alliances.

Biden spoke to his fellow G7 leaders this week during a virtual conference and informed them in no uncertain terms that he intends to reverse the direction that his presidential predecessor intended to take the nation.

The nation has rejoined the Paris Climate Accord; the U.S.A. is re-engaging in negotiations with Iran with the aim of preventing the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon; he has affirmed out commitment to NATO; he also has put Russia on notice that he won’t be “pals” with that nation’s strongman leader.

Donald Trump sought to stiff our allies whenever and wherever possible. Joe Biden is not wired that way. He intends to demonstrate his understanding that the world is figuratively shrinking and that the United States intends to reassert its role as the world’s pre-eminent world power.

This is what presidents of the United States have done for the past 100 years. I am one American who supports the tone that President Biden is taking.

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Welcome them, however …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden said he is wants to “go big” on an immigration reform proposal for Congress to consider.

I agree with him, but with an important caveat. I want there to be strict border security and enforcement of immigrant-entry rules for those seeking to come to the United States.

The president has unveiled a sweeping reform that enables undocumented residents already living here an eight-year path to seeking citizenship or legal resident status; it seeks to speed up that path for agricultural workers and recipients of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program; and, yes, it seeks technology to help patrol the nation’s borders.

The childhood arrivals idea, aka DACA, became a favorite target of the Trump administration. Donald Trump rescinded President Obama’s executive order granting a form of amnesty from deportation for those who were brought here illegally as children. Joe Biden then rescinded Trump’s order in a kind of take-that approach to peeling back his predecessor’s policies.

Democrats unveil Biden’s immigration bill, including an eight-year path to citizenship (msn.com)

I am trying to take a longer view of the approach to immigration reform is taking. For sure I do not want to see a continuation of the heartlessness espoused by many of Donald Trump’s immigration advisers, namely that prince of darkness Stephen Miller who sounded for all the world like someone who wants to shut the door completely to all immigration. As the grandson of immigrants, I take deep personal offense at the approach that the Trump administration took and I welcome the more compassionate approach being expressed by the Biden team.

And no, I do not favor any sort of “open border” notion that has become a sort of whipping boy for those on the right who suggest that anything short of walling off the United States is an endorsement of welcoming everyone … legal and illegal immigrants alike. That is the stuff of demagogues.

I want President Biden to deliver on his 2020 campaign promise to fix the nation’s immigration policies. He has thrown a bold plan out there to ponder. Finding common ground is the basis for sound legislation. The president’s decades of experience as a U.S. senator puts him in position to lead that effort.

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Get well, Mr. President

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden apparently suffers from an ailment that has afflicted millions of Americans just like me.

He is infected with Trump Fatigue. The president took part Tuesday in a CNN-sponsored town hall event in Milwaukee and declared that he is “tired of Trump.” He is tired of talking about his immediate predecessor. He wants to focus on the crises that confront him and plans to deal with them.

“I don’t want to keep talking about Trump,” Biden said, vowing that during his term in office he wants the subject to be “millions of Americans.”

Well … isn’t that a refreshing change?

I am all in, Mr. President.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/02/16/biden_im_tired_of_talking_about_donald_trump_i_dont_want_to_talk_about_him_anymore.html

The town hall also included another fascinating — and in a way a related — notion from the president. He referenced the Justice Department and declared that it isn’t “my Department of Justice.” He said the department doesn’t work for the president, but that it works for all Americans. He noted that DOJ became, during the Trump administration, the “most political” DOJ in U.S. history.

Indeed, I would implore President Biden to shuck the first-person possessive pronoun when referring to the government. President Obama had an annoying habit of constantly referring to “my vice president,” or “my national security team,” or “my Cabinet.” Donald Trump continued that practice during  his term, making reference to “my generals” and “my Justice Department.”

Memo to all presidents: You don’t own these individuals or the departments where they work. All of you, and that includes the individual at the top of the chain of command, are hired by us, you and me, to do our bidding.

So, with that President Biden — in office now for just four weeks — is seeking to chart a new direction for the federal government and for the media that cover it and report on it to the public.

He also must cure himself of the fatigue that has set in.

Get well, Mr. President.

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We can breathe again!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot possibly take credit for this, for it came brilliantly from a young broadcast journalist to whom my wife and I were listening this afternoon.

Yasmin Vossoughian, an MSNBC anchor, offered an insightful analysis of what the nation and the world have just experienced in the past week: the end of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Vossoughian said, simply, that we are now able to breathe again. Donald Trump no longer is president, and for that I sense many of us are grateful for reasons that go far beyond the contemptible manner in which he conducted himself as president.

He took the air out of the proverbial room seemingly every day he was in office. Indeed, it seems like the longest four years in many of our lives … you know?

Bloggers like me were sucked into the maelstrom that Trump created. The media, too. Yes, the folks Trump labeled as the “enemy of the people” became his most visible enablers.

Now, though, we can turn our attention to other things. Issues abound. Crises are all over the place.

We’re still waging war against a killer pandemic; our economy has collapsed; we have an environment in trouble; many Americans are treated unfairly by police authorities only because of the color of their skin.

President Biden won’t suck the air out of the room the way his immediate predecessor did. That is more than OK with me.

As for the media, my hope is that reporters also will relish the opportunity to chronicle the struggles that require government’s attention. My sense, given my own experience, is that they will welcome the relief from the exhaustion from which they will need a bit of time to recover.

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Biden set to re-emerge

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

While many of us around the country were fixated on the Senate impeachment trial of Donald John Trump, his immediate successor as president was, shall we say, lurking in the shadows.

President Biden chose to do the smart thing. He said virtually nothing about Trump’s troubles in the Senate. The president blew off questions from reporters on the impeachment trial. He said the Senate would do its work; that the managers would do their work; he expressed next to zero interest in the trial.

I don’t believe much of that. I cannot possibly know how the president spent the bulk of his day, but I feel reasonably certain he had one eye on the trial even as he sought to gather support for the COVID relief package he is ramrodding through Congress.

What I do find refreshing, though, is the relative public silence that President Biden has maintained. It’s remarkable, too, given that Vice President Kamala Harris’s name emerged as a possible witness in the Trump trial; Trump’s legal team reportedly was interested in issuing a subpoena for the VP. The “why” of it, though, remains a mystery to me.

The trial is now over. Donald Trump is officially acquitted of the charge that he incited an insurrection. Our attention now can turn to actual governance, actual legislation, actual negotiation between the head of the executive branch of government and those who lead the legislative branch.

Trump’s future as an active politician, by my reckoning, is likely finished.

I intend to focus more attention on issues that matter and on the politicians who have a direct hand in determining the direction of this great country.