Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

What about this loon’s supporters?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

While the nation debates and wrings its hands over the rise of nut-job politicians in Congress, it is good to remember something critical: They all won elections by getting more votes than their opponents.

Which means that they obtained majorities among those who cast ballots. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is the nut job du jour who has been getting the bulk of the media’s attention of late. And I do believe she is nuts.

The question we need to ponder is this: How do candidates who believe what this QAnon disciple says out loud gain the support of most voters in their political jurisdiction?

Greene represents the 14th Congressional District of Georgia, covering part of the northwestern part of the state. It went strongly for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. President Biden won the state’s overall vote, but not in the district that Greene won.

In 2020, she defeated John Cowan in the GOP runoff. Then she ran against Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal, who pulled out of the race in September 2020, meaning that Greene ran unopposed. So, she won with 75 percent of the vote.

As frightening as she is — contending that notorious school massacres were hoaxes and that Muslims are unfit for public office — what’s even scarier is that she pulled most of the voters in her district along with her.

It makes me ask: Are most of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District voters as crazy as their member of Congress?

If not Rep. Greene, then who is waiting in the tall grass to ascend to power in that part of the country?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a serious crisis on our hands if our fellow citizens continue to elect certifiable nut jobs such as Marjorie Taylor Greene to our federal legislative branch of government.

national news

Unify Congress? Hah! Good luck

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s stated intention to “unify” the nation is facing a major hurdle very close to the president’s new home.

Just down the street from the White house sits Congress. Its members are at each others’ throats. Democrats are angry and some are frightened of their Republican colleagues. Why? Because many of them have given tacit approval of the insurrection that could have produced casualties among members of Congress.

Meanwhile, GOP members are continuing their harangue against the election that President Biden won over Donald Trump.

Some members of Congress don’t want to work with their colleagues. Many of them want their offices relocated because of actual fear of how their colleagues might treat them.

Yes, there is a serious rift opening wide among members of Congress. As Politico has reported: Some House lawmakers are privately refusing to work with each other. Others are afraid to be in the same room. Two members almost got into a fist fight on the floor. And the speaker of the House is warning that “the enemy is within.”

Forget Joe Biden’s calls for unity. Members of Congress couldn’t be further divided.

‘I’m just furious’: Relations in Congress crack after attack – POLITICO

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared that the “enemy is within” the halls of Congress. She is specifically pointedly of some House members who adhere to the QAnon lunacy that school shootings are hoaxes and that Muslims cannot serve in public office. Pressure is building to a full boil among Democrats to expel Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia, who said during the 2020 campaign that it is time to “shed blood” to reverse trends she opposes.

I want Joe Biden to succeed in unifying the country. I do not have an idea on how he should do so, other than for him to call on senior Republicans in the House and Senate — men and women he knows well — to persuade them to close the yawning divide between the parties.

It’s just that the president has to start seeking unity in the other co-equal government branch.

media news

Here’s how you brief the press

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If I could, I would direct this brief message to the four people who served as press secretary during Donald Trump’s term as president.

They are, in order, Sean Spicer, Sara H. Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany. They all fluffed the job of briefing the press on issues relating to the presidency; indeed, Grisham didn’t conduct a single briefing before she quit to join the first lady’s staff. They should take heed of the manner that the current press flack, Jen Psaki, is doing her job on behalf of President Biden.

To be sure — and to be fair — the press gathered in front of Psaki has been fairly tame in tossing questions at her. There hasn’t been the in-your-face kind of interrogation we saw so often during the Trump years. Then again, the media haven’t been lied to as baldly and blatantly as they were for the previous four years.

Do you remember Sean Spicer’s initial press briefing? Here’s a reminder: He told the country that Donald Trump delivered his inaugural speech before the largest crowd in presidential inaugural history. Except that it wasn’t the largest crowd. It was a fraction of the size of either of President Barack Obama’s inaugural audiences.

So … there you go. Right out of the chute, the White House press flack for Donald Trump lied to the public, more than likely at the behest of Donald Trump his own self.

You will not hear, I am willing to wager, President Biden label the media as the “enemy of the people.” Donald Trump played the media like a fiddle before he was elected, then demonized them when they questioned him aggressively about the lies he continued to spew.

Joe Biden’s press secretary — Jen Psaki — is restoring the value of the White House press briefings.

national news

No more POTUS spin in briefing room

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden made a hefty number of promises while campaigning for the office he won.

One of them involved his commitment to listening to the “science” as it regards the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

So … with that he said he wouldn’t step to the White House briefing room podium and try to speak on issues about which he knows nothing. The pandemic virus continues to rage across the nation. Joe Biden isn’t being seen at the briefing room rostrum talking about the virus, thinking out loud about possible “cures,” such as whether one could inject or ingest cleaning fluid that would wipe out the virus just like that.

Yes, until Jan. 20, we had a president who did that. He is now gone from office. President Biden is letting the scientists and the medical doctors speak on the details of the fight that continues.

I know we shouldn’t relish what should be taken as normal behavior by a president. It is difficult to resist commenting on it given the incessant pattern of lies and misstatements that came from President Biden’s immediate predecessor.

Indeed, it wasn’t as if I could take anything that Donald Trump ever told me seriously. I grew early in his term to disbelieve every single statement that he sputtered out.

The new president isn’t likely to create that credibility misery by saying things out loud that he has no business saying. President Biden will let the scientists speak about matters they studied. They are the folks with knowledge to pass on what they know to be true.

national news

No end yet to angry rhetoric

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It was too much to expect a quick fix, an early and immediate end to the angry rhetoric that accompanied the tenure of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Perhaps it was naive to expect such a miraculous occurrence.

Still, with President Biden’s aggressive approach to dealing with the myriad crises confronting the nation, I had a smidgen of hope that there might be some relief from the white-hot expressions coming from those on the right, the far right and from the political loony bin.

One week into the Biden presidency, I continue to wait for the relief. I fear it’s going to take a long while.

We keep hearing from the QAnon nut jobs who were elected to Congress. The Trumpkin Corps keeps yammering about how their voices will not be stilled, that by golly, more than 74 million of them cast their ballots for The Donald. They ignore the obvious, which is that President Biden collected 81 million-plus votes. And … he rolled up 306 Electoral College votes, the same number Trump pulled in four years earlier; remember, too, that Trump called his victory in 2016 over Hillary Clinton a “landslide,” which of course it was nothing of the sort.

My sincere eternal hope is that we can restore much more civility to our discourse than we have seen and heard during the Trump Era. Donald Trump is vanquished from the White House. His minions in Congress remain in office. They continue to whoop and holler about vote fraud. They bitch about Joe Biden’s aggressive use of executive orders. They gripe about his big and bold ideas to salvage our economy. The lunatics among them keep using social media to harp on conspiracy theories resulting from all the lies that Trump fed them.

The tone will improve. That’s my hope. I await the day I when can call it my expectation.

International news

Putin isn’t your pal, Mr. POTUS

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin chatted the other day.

They reportedly covered — according to a read-out supplied to the media by the White House — a number of topics. They included at least two topics that Donald Trump refused repeatedly to mention to his pal Vlad: the bounty paid to Taliban terrorists who kill American service personnel on t he battlefield and the Russian interference in our elections.

What a change in tone. What a welcome change.

President Biden has made it clear, or so it appears, that he doesn’t plan to be Vladimir Putin’s friend. He wants to assert U.S. moral authority. He wants to engage Russia on nuclear arms reduction. Biden intends to face Russia down on its efforts to subvert Ukraine.

Trump boasted of his deal-making prowess but he never came close to negotiating a nuclear arms reduction deal with his good pal Putin.

Biden enters this relationship with a long history of involvement in foreign policy discussions. Let’s remember that he formerly chaired or was ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee before he became vice president for two terms serving under President Obama.

Indeed, the White House read-out of the meeting is something the public didn’t get for the past four years during Donald Trump’s term. No one ever knew what the two men talked about, except what Trump would say out loud; and we all know how believable Donald Trump could be, right?

To be sure, the read-out only reveals what the White House wants us to know. However, my own sense is that the Biden administration will deal much more forthrightly and candidly with Vladimir Putin than the Trump administration ever did.

President Biden has laid down an important marker at least by challenging Putin on the hideous report of the bounties he paid for the lives of American service personnel.

Don’t let up, Mr. President.

environmental news

Climate change: existential threat

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has blasted his way out of the chute determined to make good on proclamations he made along the campaign trail.

He has a pandemic with which to deal. He vows to restore our worldwide alliances. Biden vows to boost our economy with a titanic stimulus package. Oh, and he wants to tackle climate change head-on, full throttle.

I want to explore briefly the climate change matter.

In one of his first acts as president, Biden signed an executive order returning the United States to the worldwide Paris Climate Accord, from which Donald Trump pulled this nation.

Then he named John Kerry the head of a newly created position, special envoy on climate change. Kerry comes to this task with an impressive personal and professional record: combat veteran of the Vietnam War, senator from Massachusetts, secretary of state during the second term of the Barack Obama administration.

He now takes on the role of climate change envoy to communicate with the world on policies enacted by the Biden administration  dealing with climate change.

President Biden is  taking precisely the opposite approach to climate change than the one articulated by Donald Trump. Biden calls climate change an “existential threat” to the nation; Trump calls it a “hoax.” It isn’t a hoax. It’s the real thing. It is harming us tangibly. It poses a threat to Earth and to our ability over the long term to continue to thrive, let alone survive, on the only planet we can call home.

Biden wants to suspend oil and natural gas leases. He intends to re-energize — no pun intended — efforts to develop renewable energy sources. The president plans to restore the tougher air quality rules and  regulations that Donald Trump rescinded.

John Kerry doesn’t take on this task peering through sparkly glasses. He is realistic about the threat. Kerry said recently that even if we reduce carbon emissions today to “zero,” we still might be unable to reverse the effects of climate change on Earth’s environment.

* * *

I must add an important caveat to what I hope is a concerted effort to stem to effect of climate change. Someone will have to explain to me how our military establishment will operate the equipment it uses in a climate-friendly manner. Our jets, naval vessels, and our vast array of land vehicles — tanks, trucks, fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers — require fossil fuels to operate. If we can find our way to balance those needs with strategies that attack the existential threat many of us believe is out there … then we might be able to save the world.

I want to give President Biden a push in the direction he needs to go to attack climate change.

Uncategorized

Trump likely to escape … again!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Virtually all of me wants the Senate to convict Donald Trump of “incitement of insurrection.”

No matter how much I want to will the Senate to do the right thing, political reality is staring all of us in the puss. Conviction requires 17 Senate Republicans to join their Democratic colleagues in convicting Trump.

A conviction won’t remove him from the presidency. A clear majority of voters did that on Nov. 3 when we elected Joe Biden to be our next president. Oh, I am so happy to among the 81.2 million Americans who spoke loudly and clearly.

Let  us face reality, though.

Donald Trump still commands the attention of too many Senate Republicans, who fear the Trumpster Corps scattered across the land. The Trump cultists are rattling their proverbial sabers, threatening senators with dire political consequences if they vote to convict their guy, The Donald, the former Liar in Chief, the huckster, the con man, the phony, the fraud … stop me before I run out of breath.

Only five GOP senators voted this week that the trial is constitutional. They are right. The 45 Rs who stuck together are wrong. The Constitution doesn’t require a president to be in office for the House  to impeach him. Indeed,  the House did impeach Trump — for the second time! — just a week before he left office.

Now he is gone. The aim of the Senate is to secure a conviction and then to cast a simple-majority vote to deny Trump from ever seeking public office.

Here,  though, is another reality. Donald Trump will not be elected president ever again! His sounding the bugle for the terrorists who stormed Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January sealed his political fate.

If only the Senate could find enough Republicans with sufficient courage to convict him. I fear the worst outcome, that Donald Trump will skate through this latest Senate trial.

medical news

Biden moves quickly on pandemic fight

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden is wasting no time proving he means what he says about pulling out all the stops in fighting the killer pandemic.

The president today ordered 200 million more doses of the vaccine that is expected to help eradicate the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

This, dear friends, is music to my pointy ears.

Now, a bit of full disclosure.

A very close and dear member of my family has just been released from the hospital, where she spent four weeks, most of the time hooked up to a respirator. She now is resting at home with her husband and her golden Labrador retriever.

This is my way of telling you that this disease cuts me close to the quick and I am not going to relent one iota in following the recommended measures to maintain my own health, along with the health of our beloved family members.

President Biden said during his inaugural speech that we should wear masks and do all the things we need to do out of love for our country. I love my country, Mr. President! I hear you, sir!

I also want you to ensure the nation that you do not let up — not at all, not one bit! — in maintaining our national resolve to rid us all of this killer virus.

The death count passed the “horrific” status long ago. It is climbing as I write these words. It came too damn close to claiming someone who is very special to me.

Two hundred million more doses on the way? Yes! Bring more … many more!

Uncategorized

Surviving these trying times

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

To suggest we have been living in trying times is to commit the Mother of Understatements.

We have just said good riddance to someone who in my humble view is without question the most incompetent, imbecilic, venal and vile man ever to occupy the office of president of the United States. You know to whom I refer, so I won’t bother mentioning his name.

We also have this pandemic that continues to kill an alarming number of Americans every day.

It is fair to ponder how we get through this time, through all these crises. I do so practically daily.

My hope is for strength and for patience. Our new president, Joe Biden, is a decent man, in many ways the antithesis of the individual he replaced in the White House. He is enacting policy changes at a blinding pace as he settles in behind the Resolute Desk.

The first order of business is to get rid of the pandemic. President Biden has declared that he is establishing a “war footing” as he fights the virus; he will enact the Defense Production Act to mobilize all available federal resources to the fight against what his predecessor called an “unseen enemy.”

I await the results to bear real and tangible benefit. It will take time. We must not fool ourselves into believing a quick solution is just around the corner.

The Senate trial will be over and behind us likely soon after it begins. Do not expect a conviction of the former president who incited the insurrection on the Sixth of January. If it happens, you will find no one more excited than me; if it doesn’t, well, we will know the names of the Senate cowards who couldn’t put loyalty to the Constitution above their loyalty to an individual.

As we fend off the temptation to assess blame, though, let us give ample thanks to the system ingrained in our government by the wise men who built it in the late 18th century. It is far from perfect, but we knew that to be the case. Our system remains the best hope for the world to emulate.

The difficult era through which we have just passed likely won’t fade soon into our distant memory. How do I know that? Because I continue to write about it on this blog and I am not alone in spending emotional energy on the bygone era.

It will fade eventually. I long for the day when we can look exclusively forward without pondering the hell through which we all traveled.