Tag Archives: Joe Biden

military news

Biden to make history with DoD pick

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin is President-elect Biden’s choice to become the next secretary of defense.

I applaud the choice. Gen. Austin would be the first African-American to lead the Pentagon. He is a former Central Command leader and a warrior with a distinguished and heroic military career.

But oh yes. There’s an issue with Austin. The law requires that a former military man or woman must be out of the service a minimum of seven years before assuming a top-level Cabinet post. Austin’s been out of the Army for only four years.

What does the Senate do? Simple! It does what it did for retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis when Donald Trump nominated him to be defense secretary. Mattis received a waiver from the Senate because he, too, hadn’t been a civilian for the requisite length of time.

The Senate can — and should — do the same for Lloyd Austin. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Senate shouldn’t grant another waiver so soon after it did so for James Mattis. “Waiving the law should happen no more than once in a generation,” Reed said in 2017. “Therefore, I will not support a waiver for future nominees. Nor will I support any effort to water down or repeal the statute in the future.”

Hooey! Lloyd Austin is an outstanding choice who deserves a Senate waiver to enable him to take command of the Pentagon.

local news, medical news

Wear a mask … dammit!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This item comes to me via social media from a friend of mine who lives in Amarillo, where my wife and I lived for 23 years before relocating in 2018 to Collin County.

My friend writes: The Amarillo “statistical metropolitan area” i.e. Potter and Randall counties, has 357 COVID-19 deaths. With a population of 265,053, that puts our deaths per million at 1,346 which is higher than all but 5 of the 50 states. Out of 220 countries only 4 have a higher death rate. Respect science. Respect your neighbor. Wear a Mask.

There you go. How in the world does one argue with that? How do you dismiss the advice given to us by infectious disease experts who tell us until they get hoarse to don masks, to observe social distancing, to stay away from indoor crowds, to wash your hands frequently?

Yet some of us are doing that. They are dismissing the advice. They are rebelling against government seeking to protect us from a deadly virus. Spoiler alert: The COVID virus has killed 280,000-plus Americans already and the death rate is accelerating.

President-elect Joe Biden plans to do two things when he takes office next month. One is that he will issue a directive that orders anyone working or doing business on federal property to wear masks; the other is that he is going to ask all Americans to wear a mask for the first 100 days of the Biden administration.

I hear you, Mr. President-elect. If only the rest of us would follow your lead.

national news

Democracy can withstand this GOP assault

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am going to stand strong and foursquare in representative democracy’s corner as our system of government faces down this frontal assault by the Republican Party.

Donald Trump has lost a presidential election. He continues to challenge the free and fair results. He is losing court battle after court battle. Judges are scorning his legal team’s so-called logic. Yet he persists.

I submit that representative democracy is suffering some serious collateral damage in this political fire fight. The good news, though, is that I also believe our system of government will survive.

President-elect Joe Biden will take office in about six weeks. Donald Trump will be gone from the center of the U.S. political universe. President Biden will commence the task of “restoring our national soul.”

He will have to apply proverbial bandages to representative democracy as well. Donald Trump’s assault on our system of government is putting it to an unprecedented test. I remain faithful to the notion that our system that has been tried over many years by other virulent forces will be strong enough to withstand the damage that Donald Trump is inflicting on it.

The legendary journalist Carl Bernstein calls Trump’s refusal to accept Biden’s victory as more dangerous than President Nixon’s attempt to cover up the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. Bernstein calls Trump the most “subversive” individual ever elected to the presidency. He seeks to subvert our democratic principles to his ego, to his quest for authoritarian power and for his relentless challenge to the integrity of our voting system, which is the bedrock of our government.

No man, though, is capable of bringing down out representative democracy. It will survive this assault. Indeed, it could emerge even stronger than ever.

My eternal optimism will not allow me to consign our system to the scrap heap because a demented politician seeks to destroy it.

national news, political news

Cowards occupy Capitol Hill offices

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am sickened to the maximum degree by the cowardice I am witnessing among Republicans who occupy most of the U.S. Senate seats and a healthy minority of those in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Americans have just elected Joseph R. Biden Jr. as their president, and yet congressional Republicans by and large refuse to even refer to the president-elect by the title he earned in a free and fair election.

What the hell is going on here?

The Senate’s chief coward, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has a longstanding professional and political relationship with the president-elect. Yet he remains silent on the issue of whether he won the election. McConnell cowers in the face of the Trumpkin Corps of zealots in Kentucky who threaten him with payback if he does what he should have done long ago, which is recognize President-elect Biden as the winner … and then say so out loud in public!

McConnell is just one, of course.

Still, we are witnessing a shameful and reprehensible dereliction of duty among our congressional leadership to do the right thing, which would be to follow our two-century-old tradition of honoring the results of an election. They are dishonoring that democratic process and dishonoring the government they all took an oath to defend and protect.

They sicken me to my core.

I would say we should vote them out of office. Except that too damn many of them were just returned to office in an election we just completed. I am left, therefore, to just vent on this blog … which I will continue to do until I start seeing some courage emerging from the herd of Capitol Hill cowards.

religious news

Evangelical leaders: lukewarm to man of faith

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A story I read in the newspaper this morning offered a curiously ironic tale of how a key political demographic group is awaiting the arrival of a new president of the United States.

The evangelical Christian movement — with leaders such as Dallas preacher Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins — is giving Joe Biden a wait-and-see welcome as he prepares to become president of the United States.

The irony? Joe Biden is a man of deep and abiding faith in God and in Jesus Christ. The man he is replacing as president of the United States has what one could say generously has a flimsy relationship with Scripture. Yet the evangelical movement clung furiously to the notion of Donald Trump getting re-elected to a second term.

Why the love affair with The Donald? It’s purely political. He appointed judges who adhered to evangelicals’ world view. They are anti-choice on abortion; they favor prayer in public schools; they rule consistently against gay Americans’ rights. What does Donald Trump think about all of that? No one can say with any degree of certainty that he endorses any of it. He just makes the correct political appointments.

They’re getting now a man who attends church daily. He prays to God. His faith has held him up as he has battled unspeakable personal tragedy — such as burying his wife and infant daughter and then his grown son many years later.

President-elect Biden’s personal faith journey isn’t enough to persuade many faith leaders to back him with anything approaching the zeal they demonstrated for a guy who has only a passing acquaintance with faith and whose personal behavior betrays virtually every tenet found in both the Old and New testaments of the Good Book.

The headline in today’s Dallas Morning News declared that the “religious right” is “wary of Biden but not hostile.”

The irony of the evangelicals’ tepid response to the election of a man of faith, though, still screams loudly at me.

national news

Trump exit playing true to form

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I suppose you could say that Donald Trump’s tortured exit from the political stage is what many of us thought might occur.

No, I am not saying folks would have predicted each excruciating step by step. However, Trump’s non-political background never prepared him for the kind of defeat he would suffer on Election Day 2020 and he was ill-prepared to accept the fate that others had handed him.

He came of age and entered the business world on the back of a multimillion-dollar stake his rich father bequeathed him. He formed his own company. Trump called his own shots. He took no guff from those who worked for him. He sought no favor from those with whom he worked. Nor did Trump — by his own admission — seek forgiveness for any mistakes he made along the way.

His entire adult life was geared toward a single goal: self enrichment and aggrandizement. Trump’s ego would not allow him to think of others, nor to invest any of the wealth he acquired in the communities that gave it to him.

Then, after lying his way to fame and fortune, he decided to seek the first and only public office ever in his life: the presidency. Wouldn’t you know it? The reality TV celebrity won!

Now he’s been tossed out. The public for whom he worked and to whom he was responsible has given him the heave-ho. Hit the road, Donald, and don’t let the door hit you in your ample a** on the way out of the White House.

Donald Trump’s petulance has been mind-blowing. The dangerous game of denigration is frightening in the extreme as he rants and riffs on alleged corruption in an electoral system he took an oath to defend and protect has been astonishing in the extreme.

Does any of this, at its deepest level, surprise anyone? If it does, it certainly shouldn’t be a surprise.

He soon will be replaced by a man who has spent his adult life in public service. Joe Biden isn’t the perfect man to be elected president. However, the president-elect — given what we have endured for the past four years — is damn close to the ideal antidote to the selfishness, the narcissism, the corruption and the grifting we have seen from Donald Trump and those closest to him.

Dare I say, too: Some of us saw it — or something like it — coming a long time ago.

national news

Biden feeling the heat

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Biden is getting pulled in multiple directions by multiple political interests.

It gives me cause for concern.

Joe Biden is a center-left Democrat. I believe that’s how he portrayed himself. He moderates his views on occasion, seeking compromise when possible with politicians with differing views. So, when I hear that progressives want a more progressive Cabinet than what they’re getting to date, I am left to wonder: What do they expect from a man who campaigned as a moderate?

The president-elect is getting pressure from African-American interests, from Latinos, from Asian-Americans. They, too, want more people who look like them at the highest levels of government.

I’ve declared already that I am a “good government progressive.” One of the ways I determine “good government” is whether we are being served by the best possible individuals. Does their ethnic or  racial background rise to the level of critical importance? Well, I guess not. Then again, I am a white male, grandson of immigrants. I don’t fit into any particular racial or ethnic minority … unless you include Greeks in that category.

The president-elect has pledged to craft a government team that resembles the country he was elected to govern. I believe so far he is on the way to keeping that pledge. He has a long way to go. I hope he can resist the temptation to buckle under to every ethnic, racial or socio-economic group that tugs at him.

I am keeping faith with the promise he brings to repair the damage done by his predecessor.

national news

Trump keeps making news

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Just to be clear, I intend fully to move on, way past Donald Trump and am looking forward to offering comment, perspective and some context on Joe Biden’s presidency.

If only Donald Trump would stop making news! Dadgummit to hell anyway!

Trump ventured to Valdosta, Ga., on Saturday ostensibly to promote the candidacies of Republican U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. What does Trump do? He goes off on a lengthy grievance-filled riff about the alleged “theft” of the presidential election.

He lied his a** off yet again, claiming voter fraud where none exists. He undermined the democratic process in a state governed by fellow Republicans. The Whiner in Chief asked GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special legislative session to demand the Georgia legislature toss out the results of the statewide total that went to President-elect Biden.

What in the name of governmental overreach is Trump trying to do? He cannot dictate to governors how to conduct state business.

To his (diminished) credit, Kemp has pushed back on Trump’s demand. Trump has said he is “ashamed” to have endorsed Kemp in his run for governor in 2018.

My goodness. The Imbecile in Chief is making an unmitigated, unvarnished, unbalanced, unstable, unhinged a** of himself.

I want to move on. Really and truly. I do. Donald John Trump won’t release me.

national news

Trump may invoke his M.O. and actually ‘concede,’ sort of

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s flash back for a moment.

Donald Trump spent about five years fomenting the lie that Barack Obama was born overseas and was not a U.S. citizen, meaning he couldn’t run for president of the United States. It was a blatantly racist attack on someone who was born in Hawaii to an American woman; thus, he was a citizen by birth.

Then came a one-sentence admission in 2016 that Obama “is a U.S. citizen.” That was it. End of discussion, more or less. Trump demonstrated his shameless modus operandi.

Now he is continuing to challenge the results of an election he clearly lost to President-elect Joe Biden. He is ranting. He is riffing. He is bitching about all the grievances over alleged “corruption” in the electoral process which he continues to label as “rigged.”

Hmm. How might this play out? Here’s a thought.

The Electoral College is meeting in about nine days to certify Joe Biden’s victory. He has accrued 306 electoral votes; he needs just 270 of them.

When the Electoral College certifies Biden’s victory, I believe it is entirely possible that Trump could issue a terse statement that declares Biden is the duly elected president of the United States. He won’t concede in the traditional sense.

There likely won’t be a phone call to the winner, congratulating him and pledging his support for the remainder of the time he is president. He won’t say a word about the rigorous campaign that Biden waged.

He’ll just say that Biden won. Then he’ll be done.

Trump might not show up for President Biden’s inaugural. Indeed, I do not expect him to be there. Trump will get on Air Force One and jet off to Mar-a-Lago to play some golf and schmooze with his cronies.

Is that out of the question? I don’t think so. Nothing this guy Trump does should surprise anyone on Earth.

Just be gone … Donald.

national news

Biden lead piles up

6 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Not that anyone is keeping score — other than me — but here’s a bit of election trivia for you to ponder.

President-elect Biden’s actual vote margin over Donald Trump has surpassed 7 million ballots, making this the most decisive election victory since 2008, when Barack Obama defeated the late John McCain by nearly 10 million votes.

I understand a couple of realities about this vote margin. One is that it doesn’t matter about who gets elected, since the Electoral College makes that call. Oh, wait! President-elect Biden has 306 electoral votes; he only needed 270 to win the presidency.

Four years ago, Trump rolled up the same number of electoral votes that Biden did and he called his win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 a “landslide.” This time he alleges Biden’s win is the result of a “rigged election.” What utter horsesh**!

Sigh! Trump went to Georgia tonight to keep making his contemptuous complaint about fraud and other other idiocy about how he “won” the Georgia vote.

Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (uselectionatlas.org)

The other reality is that of the 7 million vote majority that Trump rang up, more than 5 million ballots came from California. Still, let’s remember that this was a national election. Still, let’s be prepared to hear the claptrap from the Trumpster toadies that will seek to denigrate the scope of Joe Biden’s victory.

Trump lost the election … bigly.