Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news

Enjoying sight and sound of No. 44 on the stump

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I was proud to vote for Barack Hussein Obama when he ran for election and re-election as president of the United States.

And I will be candid: I miss him and wish there was some way he could still sit in the Oval Office. He cannot do that. The U.S. Constitution prohibited him from seeking a third term as president.

Now, though, he has back on the political stage, stumping for his “brother,” Joe Biden, who served as vice president during Obama’s two successful terms as president.

I admit as well to enjoying listening to the former president peel the hide off of his successor, Donald Trump, whose lies and misrepresentations seemingly have been more than President Obama can stomach.

I also wonder if Trump’s incessant attacks on Obama’s record, replete with their litany of lies, has gotten under the former president’s skin. If I had been the subject of those defamatory attacks, I know for damn certain I would be pi**ed off beyond measure.

Obama stood with former VP Biden today in Detroit, telling the horn-honking socially distanced audience what many of us already know: that Donald Trump is an abject failure as president. Obama wondered aloud about why Trump and his GOP cohorts, after 10 years of complaining about the Affordable Care Act, haven’t yet produced anything resembling a replacement. And yet, as President Obama noted, they want to toss aside health care insurance that many millions of Americans depend on during this pandemic crisis.

Amazing, yes? And stupid!

I know I am not the only American who has missed the sound of President Barack Obama’s voice, the tenor of his message or the sight of him laying waste to the unfit individual who succeeded him as president.

Welcome back to the battle, Mr. President.

national news

Simple decency, anyone?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am going to share something that arrived on my Facebook news feed. It comes from a friend of mine in Amarillo, Texas; he is a retired physician.

I will post it here … and then I will get the heck out of the way.

Oh, The Humanity!
I saw something on television yesterday that moved me greatly. Obama was standing outside the Philadelphia football stadium, waiting his turn to address a crowd in their cars in support of Joe Biden. No coat, shirtsleeves rolled up, mask on, clear space around him. On the periphery were a young black woman with a toddler, maybe four, both masked. The mother urged the girl to approach Obama, which she did very hesitantly, looking back to Mom. Obama recognized the problem: he is 6’1″ and a semi deity. So he squatted down to the child’s height, extended his arms and the child ran to him. What moved me was the simple decency of the act. I could easily picture George W., Clinton, George H.W., Reagan or Carter doing the same thing. Trump? No way.
national news

The ‘most important line’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza listened to Barack Obama peel the bark off Donald Trump’s hypersensitive hide Wednesday and came away with what he believes is the former president’s most cogent line about his successor.

Cillizza writes: “And with Joe and Kamala at the helm, you’re not going to have to think about the crazy things they said every day. And that’s worth a lot. You’re not going to have to argue about them every day. It just won’t be so exhausting.”

As Cillizza noted in his own analysis, the discussion won’t turn on specific policy statements. Instead, he writes, “It’s about a country absolutely exhausted by Trump — his norm-busting, his misinformation, his junior high school bullying, and his tweeting, his tweeting, his tweeting.”

There you go.

I admit to being worn out by Donald Trump. Every single day of the presidency on this individual’s watch has been exercise in “Can he top the previous day?” Sadly, Trump has managed to do it.

I don’t want, as President Obama said, to awaken every morning wondering what in the world the president has done to cast a pall over this nation.

I want normal behavior in the president. I want Joe Biden to restore the dignity that used to personify the office.

national news

The end is near

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

OK, settle down. I don’t mean The End, as in … you know.

I mean the end of a presidential campaign is coming up. It’s right around the corner. They are calling this the “election season,” given that so many Americans are voting early.

My wife and I did. So did our sons. We are among the 30 million or so Americans who have decided to cast our ballots early to ensure they get counted, given the suspicion that Donald Trump is trying to lay over the entire electoral system. Think of that for just a moment: The doubt is coming from the individual who took an oath four years to protect the system. Now he wants to fear it, to believe it’s corrupt, that it’s fake, phony.

What a moron!

But the end of the season is coming along. We’re 13 days to go when they shut down the polls from coast to coast to coast and start counting those ballots.

I cannot speak for anyone other than myself. I want former two-term Vice President Joe Biden to win this election just about more than any single candidate I’ve ever wanted to win — with the possible exception of Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

My intense desire to see Sen. Obama win the 2008 contest had more to do with the historic nature of his election than his opponent, the late Sen. John McCain, for whom I had great respect given the suffering he endured during wartime in defense of this country. Eight years later the intensity ratcheted up again as Hillary Clinton sought to defeat Trump. I believed then and I do today that she is eminently qualified to serve as president.

Now it’s Joe Biden who has earned my undivided attention. I have been aware of him since he first won election to the U.S. Senate in 1972. I knew about the tragedy that befell him as he prepared to take office with the death of his wife and daughter in a motor vehicle crash.

He served in the Senate with distinction until Barack Obama tapped him to run as VP in 2008.

And yes, I am aware of his missteps, such as his failed 1988 presidential campaign when Biden got caught copying the rhetoric of a British politician.

Joe Biden is the man of the hour today. I want him to win bigly. I want Trump to be shown the door and I want Joseph Biden to be given the chance to deliver on his pledge to restore dignity to the presidency.

I want this season to end.

legal news, national news

Merrick Garland haunts this hearing

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Merrick Garland is very much alive and well but his “ghost” floated throughout the hearing room today as a congressional hearing commenced on an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee welcomed another federal judge, Amy Coney Barrett, as she began her confirmation hearing to the U.S. Supreme Court. She would take the seat occupied by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.

Garland’s role in this drama? Well, he once got nominated to the high court by President Barack Obama. Another justice, Antonin Scalia, died in February 2016 while on vacation in Texas. President Obama wanted to nominate a successor. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time in declaring his intention to block that effort. Why? Because the voters had a right to be heard before a SCOTUS nomination would be considered by the Senate.

We had a presidential election in 2016. Obama couldn’t run again. It turned out that Donald Trump would win the election. So, Trump got to select someone to succeed Scalia; he chose Neil Gorsuch.

The hypocrisy between then and now is stunning in its scope.

We were 10 months away from the previous election when a vacancy occurred. Now, we’re just 22 days before the next election. Don’t Americans have a right to have their voices heard before the Senate considers a nominee to succeed Ginsburg? Of course we do.

Except that Republicans who at the moment hold the majority of Senate seats are pushing full speed with the Barrett hearing.

Most astonishing of all is the comment that Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham made in 2018. He said then that if an opening occurs during Donald Trump’s term as president and the “primary season has begun,” the Senate should hold off until after the election before considering a possible replacement.

Graham said we could hold his words against him. Fine. Many of us are doing that, Mr. Chairman.

Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t be my choice to join the court. I much prefer a jurist in the Merrick Garland mold: moderate, center-left in philosophical judicial outlook. Garland, though, never got the courtesy of a hearing, let alone a Senate vote, that appears to be in store for Judge Barrett.

It’s all because the Senate GOP majority played politics with the judicial nomination process in 2016 … and is doing so once again right now.

Shameful.

national news

Hypocrisy rules!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The hypocrisy ringing throughout the halls of the nation’s Capitol Building is becoming the stuff of legend.

Four years ago, Republican U.S. senators said time and time again that no president should be allowed to fill a Supreme Court seat during an election year. They didn’t qualify the assertion. They didn’t stipulate presidents of any particular party.

They said no president, none, should move forward with selecting a justice when we have a presidential election on tap.

You will recall in early 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly. President Barack Obama wanted to name a successor. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said “not so fast.” He slammed the brakes on a nomination.

GOP senators stepped up and said the same thing. No president should select someone for a lifetime during an election year.

Recall that Scalia died nearly 10 months before the 2016 presidential election. Now we have Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died just 48 days prior to the next election.

Republican senators are ignoring their own assertion. They now want to rush a nomination forward before the Nov. 3 election.

What happened to the 2016 mantra of “giving the people a voice” in who should sit on the Supreme Court? Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida even went so far as to say he would make that demand when we have a Republican president. Hey, Marco, we have one now … bub! What say you these days about seating someone to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg? I know. It’s full steam ahead!

The people still deserve a voice before the Senate acts on Donald Trump’s expected nomination of someone to succeed the great Justice Ginsburg. If the Senate GOP thought it was true in 2016 when Barack Obama sought to fill a post vacated by Justice Scalia’s death, then it should hold to that philosophy now.

Right? Oh wait! The Party of Trump doesn’t believe in ethics, fairness, truth-telling and honor.

national news

Anyone can get elected to this office

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque 

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Barack Hussein Obama used to boast — and I imagine he still tells audiences this factoid — that he is proof that “anyone can get elected” president of the United States.

He is of mixed race: half black and half white. He came from a broken home. His mother and his maternal grandparents reared him into a university graduate, where he excelled at Harvard Law, becoming the first African-American to edit the Harvard Law Review.

Yes, Obama’s story is compelling.

However, he is a piker in the “anyone can get elected” category. The hands-down winner of that contest, such as it is, would be Donald John Trump, the immediate successor to Barack Obama.

Now, having said that, I forewarn you that what I am going to say next will be far from complimentary. While I continue to hold the former president in the highest regard partly because of his life story, I hold the current president in the lowest regard, also partly because of his life story.

Trump was born into wealth. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and then from Penn’s Wharton School of Business. He went into business, riding a multimillion-dollar stake from his father. He bought commercial real estate. Trump built office buildings and apartment complexes.

Trump managed to grow his inherited wealth into something even bigger. Along the way, he had business failures. He filed multiple bankruptcies. He schmoozed with fellow developers, some of whom had questionable dealings (see Jeffrey Epstein, as just one example).

Then he got involved with “reality TV.” He hosted a game show. He managed beauty pageants.

The real estate mogul got married, then divorced. He married and divorced again. He is now married to his third wife. Along the way, he accrued more wealth, lost some of it through more business failures. He produced five children with the three women he married.

What is missing from this brief background? Give up? OK, here it is: public service. Unlike Barack Obama, who became a “community organizer” right out of law school, and then a state senator in Illinois before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Donald Trump devoted not a single second of his time to serving the public.

Nothing. Zero. It was all about Trump.

So I am left to wonder how in the name of presidential politics was this guy able to parlay his life experience into assuming the most powerful and most exalted public office on Earth.

I am all in favor of “anyone” seeking public office. To that extent, I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge Donald Trump seeking the presidency after pursuing a career in business and … well, whatever else he decided to do.

Barack Obama, though, remains in my estimation the idealistic version of the cliche that “anyone can get elected” to the nation’s highest office. He rose quickly to be sure. His life, though, was a testament to public service.

Donald Trump’s life was a testament to self-service.

And it has shown itself demonstrably during his time in the only public office he ever has sought — or ever will seek.

environmental news

Reinvest in renewables

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Politics is everywhere, including places where it doesn’t belong.

As Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden notes, fires and hurricanes don’t discriminate between “red and blue states.” He is seeking to rely on science to determine what the national response should be to fight what he has identified correctly as an existential threat to the nation.

That is climate change.

Donald Trump took office in January 2017 and began dismantling environmental rules and regulations established by the Obama administration. He fought to restore a full-throttle fossil fuel exploratory policy.

What the president ignored is that Obama’s effort to develop clean, renewable energy actually contributed to this nation’s independence from foreign-produced fossil fuels. Do you recall when Republicans blasted Hillary Clinton for saying in 2016 that she intended to eliminate jobs related to the coal industry? They ignored the rest of her statement, which was that she intended to replace those jobs with those associated with renewable energy development.

So it was prior to the time Donald Trump took office.

The Pacific Coast wildfires are the direct result of a changing worldwide climate, as scientists have affirmed. Trump is casting aside those analyses. He said “forest management” needs improvement, which he insists will prevent the explosive fires that have incinerated more than 4 million acres in California, Oregon and Washington.

Joe Biden is vowing for all he is worth to restore the effort to develop renewable energy sources. I haven’t heard him say he would propose ending fossil fuel exploration and development.

We have on our hands a direct national security threat that has nothing to do with terrorism. It has everything to do with the changing climate that is bringing untold destruction in the form of fire, heavy wind, shattering coastal surf.

This great nation needs national leadership from the top of the governmental chain of command. It isn’t getting it from the individual in charge at this moment. I am quite confident we will receive it when we replace him with someone who will listen intently to scientists who know what they are talking about.

International news

Nobel Peace Prize for Trump? Eek!

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Here we go!

Donald Trump has been nominated officially for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination comes from a right-wing Norwegian politician who thinks the U.S.-brokered peace deal with Israel and the United Arab Emirates is just, well, the greatest thing to happen this year on Earth.

As you can imagine, U.S. conservatives are excited about it; U.S. liberals are, shall we say, aghast. And you no doubt can guess that the Twitter-verse went bonkers over the nomination. Trump went nuts, too, according to The Hill: Trump shared the news of the nomination in at least 15 different tweets and retweets with his nearly 87 million followers on social media.

Count me as one of those who is horrified at the prospect of Trump getting this award.

You see, here is what I project happening. Trump’s political campaign is going to use the nomination as grist to pitch for his re-election. Then we’ll have to hear from Trump himself bragging about it.

Take this to the bank, too: He’ll just have to mention the Peace Prize that President Obama received at the beginning of his two terms in office. Obama himself has noted that the award at the time seemed a good bit, um, premature. The Nobel Committee, though, sought to honor the new president on the hope that he would bring worldwide peace. I am willing and able to acknowledge that President Obama didn’t leave us a more peaceful world when he exited his office in January 2017.

I just want this election to arrive on time. I want Donald Trump to be gone. I no longer want to hear his voice. Nor do I want to see his puss on my TV screen.

And I certainly do not want to hear him yammering and yapping about a Peace Prize nomination. Hey, maybe he’ll talk the Nobel committee out of awarding it to him just because of his incessant blathering.

national news

Who’s the lawless POTUS?

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(Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Let’s set the record straight on how we define lawlessness.

Steven Bannon has just been indicted on fraud charges related to the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign; he is the seventh member of Trump’s team to be indicted, to have pleaded guilty to criminal activity or convicted at trial.

Trump got a question from a reporter to explain why so many of these key associates have run afoul of the law.

Trump then blurted out the lie he keeps repeating about the Barack Obama administration. He called President Obama and Vice President Biden — Trump’s 2020 opponent — corrupt and “lawless.” He said the Obama administration “spied” on his campaign.

Hmm. The record, though, tells us that zero members of the Obama administration were indicted, convicted or pleaded guilty to criminal activity. Furthermore, the Justice Department on President Obama’s watch was reacting to reports that Russians were working with the Trump campaign while interfering with the 2016 election. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report has just confirmed that very fact.

Lawlessness, Mr. President? Look inward.