Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Trump skates … again!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s over.

The ending didn’t produce a result that I wanted. Fifty-seven U.S. senators voted to convict Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection against the government of this country; 43 of them voted “not guilty.”

But … the U.S. Constitution requires 10 more “guilty” votes to hold the ex-president accountable for what I know he did on Jan. 6, which was to whip an angry crowd into a frenzy, to march on Capitol Hill and to subvert Congress’s effort to certify a duly conducted free and fair election for president.

I acknowledge that the result is final. Most of our senators put country ahead of party or ahead of a man. Seven Republicans mustered up the guts to do the right thing.

There will be a lot of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth over the post-vote speech delivered by Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, which was riveting in its own right. McConnell had just minutes before cast a not guilty vote for Donald Trump. Then he stood before the nation and said, in effect, that Trump did all the things that the impeachment article alleged he did. He incited the crowd, which acted on the then-president’s own words.

McConnell also said that Trump didn’t get away with anything, that he will be held accountable later. Hmm.

So, we can move on to more pressing matters that are relevant to the here and now. President Biden is at work seeking to press Congress for COVID relief; we need help to jump-start the economy; we have environmental concerns that pose an existential threat to our national security; we have racial unrest still boiling in communities across the land.

I am ready to put this sorry episode aside. However, I won’t forget it.

Nor will I ever forgive Texas’s two senators — Ted Cruz and John Cornyn — for refusing to recognize what we all witnessed in real time, that Donald John Trump interfered in a free and fair election.

national news

Let’s move on … but do not forget!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Our latest national nightmare is winding its way to a conclusion.

I’ll toss a single bouquet at Donald Trump’s legal team. It took next to no time to finish its job in defending their client in the U.S. Senate trial against charges that he incited an insurrection against the U.S. government.

I don’t believe Trump’s team made the case. But that’s just me. He did what the House of Representatives alleged he did in its impeachment article. The remaining task will be for the Senate to cast its vote.

I do not expect a conviction. Trump will walk away. The Constitution sets a high bar for conviction, two-thirds of the senators have to agree; they won’t get there.

What now? Well, it is time to move on. It is not time to forget. Nor is it time to shove aside what happened on the Sixth of January. What happened was an egregious attack on our system of government. It was an attack on our democratic process.

The terrorists who stormed Capitol Hill intended to stop Congress from fulfilling its constitutional duty of certifying the results of an election that Donald Trump lost. He still hasn’t accepted his defeat, that Joe Biden is now president.

The Senate very soon can get busy with other pressing matters. COVID relief needs approval. There needs to be attention paid to economic revival. President Biden can now step out of the shadows cast by the impeachment trial and insert his own efforts at fixing what ails the nation.

I am fine with that. I only wish we could anticipate a more just outcome from the Senate trial. We won’t get it.

Instead, we are going to witness a majority of Republican senators continue to lick the boots of a cult figure. There might be a few crossovers, just not enough of them.

If I was King of the World, I would suggest that the Republican Party needs to assess whether it believes that “character matters,” and that it hues to the tenets of inclusion that made it a great political party. The Party of Trump represents none of it.

But, hey, that’s politics, right?

DC riot, national news

Trump-Pence: Done!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Imagine where former Vice President Mike Pence is at this moment and then ponder: What is he thinking if he is watching the U.S. Senate trial of Donald John Trump?

The House managers who are prosecuting the ex-president today told a chilling (true) tale of what happened on the Sixth of January, the day Trump incited the riotous mob to storm Capitol Hill.

Vice President Pence was at work in the Capitol Building at that time doing his constitutional duty, which was to preside over a joint congressional session that was meeting to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election — which Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Trump said Pence didn’t “have the courage” to go far beyond his constitutional responsibility and reverse the outcome of the election. The rioters went looking for Pence, declaring their intention to “hang” him.

Did Donald Trump call the VP to offer him comfort? Did he deploy security officers to rescue Pence from the murderous mob? Did he do anything to protect Pence, let alone members of Congress who were doing what the Constitution required them to do? No to all of it! Donald Trump did nothing.

So now I am left to wonder about the former vice president: What in the world is he thinking? How does he remain silent based on what I believe he has seen? How in the name of all that is decent does he maintain any kind of relationship with the man for whom he stood foursquare during their joint term in office?

I noted a while ago that Pence’s relationship with Trump likely ended when he did his job and declared that the 2020 presidential vote was legal, just and that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would become the next president and vice president of the United States.

Today’s testimony only cements my view that former Vice President Pence likely loathes the individual who asked him to join the clown car parade that ran the executive branch of the federal government.

national news

Restore ‘peaceful transition’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This myth must be dispelled … which is that the presidential transfer from Donald Trump to Joe Biden was not the “peaceful transition of power” we all cherish about our system of government.

That transition included the infamous terrorist riot of the Sixth of January, the one that killed five people, including a Capitol Police officer who died trying to keep the mob from overpowering the Capitol Building.

So, a Senate trial is about to commence. We must never — not ever! — lose sight of what we nearly lost on that terrible day and in the weeks that preceded it. We nearly lost what arguably is the most significant positive aspect of our system of government.

We go through a presidential election every four years. They produce a winner and a loser. The winner is filled with joy and anticipation of assuming the awesome power of the office. The loser is disappointed, and understandably so. But the candidate who loses that contest usually then calls the winner, offers a word of congratulations and then pledges to “work with” the winner in continuing our national journey.

That didn’t happen in 2020. The loser bitched and moaned about phony “vote fraud” and said the election was “stolen” from him. He mounted legal challenges ad nauseum against the result; state and federal courts threw them all out.

Then we had the riot. We all witnessed the horror.

Have we lost our bragging point? Has it been consigned to some historical trash heap? No. It hasn’t. The only way we can lose it forever would be if it were to repeat itself in four years, or any time after that.

We must be mindful of what happened during this transition. It wasn’t peaceful. It wasn’t orderly. President Biden took office after harvesting his vast knowledge of government to ensure that when he took over the executive branch that he had as much of his team installed and ready to go as he could.

The transition from Trump to Biden should have been peaceful. It wasn’t. Let’s  not forget what we all witnessed and let us be sure we remind those who come after us about the danger that lurks when a losing presidential candidate refuses to concede that he or she has lost a free, fair and democratic election.

national news, national security

Fight the home-grown terrorists

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Domestic terrorism has entered the current political debate.

It is about damn time!

For the past four years, we have paid too little attention, or exerted too little emotional capital on the scourge of domestic, home-grown, corn-fed terrorists who hide in plain sight in our midst.

They presented themselves in full force on the Sixth of January when they marched to Capitol Hill, smashed their way into the Capitol Building, killed five human beings and threatened to stop the democratic process of certifying the results of a free and fair election.

President Biden has introduced the term “domestic terrorists” to the current lexicon, reviving it in the face of what the entire world witnessed early this past month.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told congressional committee members in 2019 that domestic terrorists posed an exponentially greater threat to Americans’ security that foreign terrorists working for, say, ISIS or al-Qaeda.

Did the Donald Trump administration act on that statement? Did it call out the proverbial cavalry to answer the call to root out the terrorists? No. It didn’t. Instead, we heard the president of the United States say in 2017 that there were good people on “both sides” of a dispute that erupted in Charlottesville, Va., between counter protesters and — get this — the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and assorted white supremacists.

Yep. Donald Trump sought to elevate the Klansmen and Nazis to the same moral level of those who fought against them.

That cannot continue. Thank goodness we now have a president, Joe Biden, who knows better than to utter such moronic rhetoric out loud. You see, words have consequences and it is time this nation deal forthrightly with the terrorists who live among us.

The leadership required to commence that fight has just taken office in Washington, D.C. I believe the battle must be fought at least as long and hard as we are fighting the overseas enemies … and we mustn’t back away from calling what they are.

Terrorists.

national news

Get the Cabinet seated

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has six members of the Cabinet confirmed by the Senate and sworn into office.

He needs the rest of them. Now! Or at the very least as soon as is humanly possible, given the other thing that is occupying senators’ minds right now. That would be the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

I want the Senate to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection. To my way of thinking, it won’t take much time for House impeachment managers to make the case that Trump’s ghastly rhetoric on Jan. 6 ignited the riot that swarmed over Capitol Hill and could have disrupted the constitutional process of certifying the election that Biden won.

The Senate, though, can multi-task. It can hear evidence for half a day and then spend the other half considering Cabinet nominees and then voting on them.

President Biden was denied a smooth transition from Trump’s team. Trump get yammering about vote fraud that didn’t exist. He challenged the results of a free and fair election.

To be sure the president is moving rapidly on the pandemic front and in trying to get relief for millions of Americans affected by the killer virus. However, he needs an entire team suited up and  ready to implement presidential policy.

That requires the Senate to confirm them. The attorney general nominee, Merrick Garland, deserves a hearing … to state the most glaring vacancy still needing to be filled.

Joe Biden needs to be able to govern effectively and with clarity. He needs the executive branch of government to run with maximum efficiency.

Joe Biden, national news

Collegiality still MIA

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I must admit to a certain level of naivete.

My hope had been that with the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States that the nation would see a fairly rapid restoration of good manners among members of Congress and congressional interaction with the White House.

President Biden built a lengthy Senate career marked by the former senator’s long-standing and nearly legendary ability to work with Republicans. He calls himself a “proud Democrat” but he managed to forge friendships with colleagues from the other side of the room.

He served 36 years in the Senate before becoming vice president in the Obama administration. He worked hand-in-glove with GOP senators.

Then he ran for president against Donald Trump, whose term as president was marked by constant battles with Democrats. He took a lot of Republican members of Congress along with him in those fights.

What I never quite banked on was that the animosity would outlive Donald Trump’s departure from the White House. I am saddened to realize that the residue of that anger and animosity has infected many GOP House members and senators, even as the nation has sought to recover from the tempest, tumult and turmoil of the Trump years.

The nation’s divisions run deep. I am not going to concede that the divisions are deepening at this moment. I will cling to the belief that they have reached rock bottom. Until we are able to bind up those wounds, I fear that President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are in for a long slog through the morass.

I heard today that Merrick Garland, the president’s nominee to be attorney general, can’t get a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee to consider his confirmation. The current chair, Republican Lindsey Graham, won’t schedule a hearing.

There’s good news, though, on the horizon. Graham will hand the chairman’s gavel over to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy soon and Leahy then will get the hearing scheduled.

What is remarkable about Graham’s intransigence is  that he once described Joe Biden as one of “the finest men God ever created.” The men’s friendship was long thought to be a model of bipartisan chumminess. Then Graham slipped into Donald Trump’s hip pocket and that all changed.

I use that example to illustrate the anger that continues to infect the governance of this country.

The lingering anger likely will be one of the many distasteful legacies that Donald Trump leaves behind.

national news

‘Normal’ makes news?

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This is strange in my humble view.

What passes for “normal” in the White House has become the stuff of feature articles in magazines and newspapers. The Hill, which covers Capitol Hill, published an article this week that talks about how “normal” life has become in the White House since President Biden took over from, oh … you know.

It’s kinda bizarre.

Normal now includes daily presidential briefings, which Donald Trump couldn’t stand. Trump called them a waste of his time, which if you think about it, he probably was right; he needed that time to send out Twitter pronouncements and hurl insults at his foes.

As The Hill reported: “It’s so funny – I hear from friends on both sides of the aisle how cleansing it is to wake up in the morning without feeling that the day will be inflamed by a crazy tweet,” said former Rep. Steve Israel, who served as the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the Obama era. “Even people who disagree with President Biden say that at least we’re back to normal.”

Biden doubles down on normal at White House | TheHill

President and Mrs. Biden attended church on their first Sunday living in the White House. That, too, is going to become part of the first couple’s routine. So, um, very normal.

What we are witnessing is the re-creation of an executive branch of government built on long-standing practices, procedures and principles that President Biden knows well, given his immense U.S. Senate and vice-presidential pedigree. Donald Trump entered the only public office he ever sought with no such experience or understanding and, oh brother, it showed.

I welcome the return of normal. I also look forward to the day when it no longer is newsworthy.

national security

No briefings for Trump

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

“I’d rather not speculate out loud. I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”

That about sums it up. President Biden has declared that Donald J. Trump, his immediate predecessor, won’t get intelligence briefings.

Biden says Trump shouldn’t get intel briefings (msn.com)

Indeed, what is the point of giving this information to someone who placed so little value on the daily presidential briefings to which he was entitled when he held the office? None, as far as anyone can tell.

It’s usually customary to give immediate past presidents these briefings. It is meant as a courtesy to the individual who had immediate access to the most sensitive information in the country until the moment he left the presidency.

Trump, though, has engaged in some of the most hideous behavior imaginable since losing his re-election bid in 2020. He has not — and may never — accepted the results of the election. He has not yet congratulated President Biden specifically.

And, of course, he egged on the terrorist mob to storm Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. We know what happened on that terrible day.

Give him presidential intelligence briefings? No way, 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.”Â