Tag Archives: Joe Biden

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Optimism taking a hit

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am by nature an optimist. Really, it’s true!

Thus, I have sought to maintain an optimistic outlook as President-elect Biden seeks to form a government even while Donald Trump has refused to accept what we all know what occurred on Nov. 3.

Biden defeated Trump. His vote margin is approaching 6 million ballots. Biden’s electoral vote margin sits at 306-232. My hope has been all along that Biden could form a government and begin the task of “restoring our national soul” while unifying a badly divided nation.

Events of the past 10 days or so are testing my optimistic instincts.

Trump is fomenting the Big Lie that the election was rigged. It was nothing of the sort. Yet polling suggests that roughly 30 percent of American voters believe the lame-duck president’s ridiculous and dangerous assertion about “widespread” voter fraud.

This puts Biden’s mission of reunification in potentially dire peril. He pledges to be the president of “all Americans.” He said that “even if you voted for President Trump,” Biden will be your president, too. How can that be a bad thing? Did we hear such a proclamation from Donald Trump when he took office? He did pledge to unify the nation, but then embarked on a strategy that aimed to please only the base of supporters who have hung with him throughout his term.

I still am cautiously optimistic that the president-elect will be able to formally “transition” into the nation’s highest office. However, “cautiously” is becoming more important as I express my hope for that outcome.

Donald Trump’s petulance has grown into a dangerous gambit that threatens us at many levels. It is endangering a new president’s noble pledge to restore our national soul and bridge the partisan chasm that divides the nation he was elected to govern.

My optimistic nature is being strained. I hope the stress and strain doesn’t break it.

national news

Wanting a ‘normal’ and ‘boring’ POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot in good conscience take credit for thinking of this, but I have no problem repeating it here.

I am waiting anxiously for a return to a “boring” U.S. presidency.

Donald Trump’s term has been fraught with anxiety at almost every level imaginable. What in the world is this guy going to say via Twitter? Who will he fire? What policy statement will be fire off without consulting with anyone other than his innards? Who is he going to pi** off with a reckless tweet?

Those days are soon to be behind us. President-elect Biden will become President Biden on Jan. 20 and soon — as in immediately — my hope is that we return to a normal presidency. One that includes sane political judgment based on same political discussion.

Whereas the current president came from the world of business where he was his own boss and didn’t answer to anyone, the new president comes from the world of government. That’s where the people — you and I — are the collective boss. We call the shots. We did so with the election, deciding we had enough of the turbulence, tumult and tempest that accompanied damn near everything that Donald Trump did.

I am so ready for a return to what we used to think of as “normal” behavior from our head of state.

national news

Revenge firings … that’s what they are!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald John Trump has taken the “art” of revenge firing to a despicable new low.

The outgoing president of the United States decided to fire the man he hired to make our election more secure for — are you ready for this? — declaring that the 2020 presidential election is the safest and most secure in U.S. history.

What’s more, Department of Homeland Security official Christopher Krebs got word of his firing via Twitter, which is Trump’s modus operandi for issuing these policy pronouncements.

All Krebs did was issue a statement that runs diametrically counter to Trump’s narrative, which is that President-elect Biden won the election because it is “rigged.” Trump is hollering about “widespread voter fraud” where none exists. Krebs had the temerity to say as much in his statement to the world.

So now he’s gone. Trump has hired another lackey to take Krebs’s place … and the phony narrative will continue to fester on the public stage.

Hey, I realize I said I would concentrate on Joe Biden’s developing presidency rather than worry about what’s left of Trump’s term in office. I just cannot let this shameful example of vengeance go unnoticed. So there.

national news

Biden enters office with loads of credibility

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Biden’s efforts to transition from private citizen to the highest public office in the nation has been difficult to watch from afar.

Donald Trump keeps trying to stymie his successor’s efforts to reach full speed on domestic, scientific and foreign policy matters.

However, I am going to take some comfort in the knowledge that Biden brings to the presidency owing to his nearly five decades in public service.

The president-elect served 36 years in the U.S. Senate before becoming vice president in 2009. During that time in the Senate he chaired the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees for a total of 24 years. He built friendships and assorted professional and political relationships with hundreds of folks in this country and abroad.

Biden hasn’t yet received the kind of high-level briefing afforded customarily to presidents-elect, but he is able to reach beyond normal channels to experts from around the world for advice and  counsel.

The president-elect’s years of experience in public service will serve him well as he takes office, even if he is unable to obtain the kind of cooperation that outgoing president’s usually offer.

My hope springs eternal that eventually Donald Trump will put the country’s interests first and allow the transition to proceed as it should.

If that hope is never realized, I am going to believe that President-elect Joe Biden will be able to parlay his vast experience into an effective presidency … even as he struggles to get our new government up to speed.

national news

Focusing now on Joe Biden

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to make two quick points, then I’ll step aside.

First, I have declared that Donald Trump is sliding rapidly into irrelevancy as a defeated candidate for re-election as president of the United States.

Therefore, I am going to spend equally rapidly declining effort commenting on his still-incessant lying.

Second, this blog is going to concentrate instead on President-elect Joe Biden’s transition into the nation’s highest office. I want to offer him advice when I feel I can provide it. I might even scold him if he says or does something that displeases me. Hey, no one is perfect … you know?

It’s time for High Plains Blogger to turn the proverbial page.

Thus, I have just done so.

Good night.

national news

Putin is laughing his a** off

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Do you know who among all the world leaders is laughing so hard he is having trouble catching his breath?

It has to be Russian strongman/despot/dictator/former Soviet spy chief Vladimir Putin. That’s who.

Think of it. His boy, Donald Trump, lost his re-election bid for a second term as U.S. president. Trump is refusing to concede to President-elect Joe Biden. He is withholding national security information from the new president’s team. He is fighting the results in courts all over the place; and he’s getting them tossed by judges.

Trump is sowing seeds of discord in our electoral system.

Isn’t that precisely what Putin sought to do in 2016? And again in 2020? Isn’t this kind of activity that former special counsel Robert Mueller III warned us would happen?

Trump is fabricating a story where none exists.

And yet Vladimir Putin must be laughing his keister off as he watches from the Kremlin while Trump continues this ridiculous effort to undermine a political system he took a sacred oath to defend and protect.

I do hope the new president is taking plenty of notes and will get Putin on the phone soon and read him the riot act, warning him of serious consequences for his interference in our electoral system.

national news

Can Biden resist the extremists?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump demonstrated during his term as president an inability to resist the demands of those on the far right wing of the Republican Party.

As an aside, I’ll resist referring to the GOP as “his” party because I consider Trump to be a Republican In Name Only.

No such qualifier is required of President-elect Joe Biden, a center-left Democrat with years of credentials to illustrate the point.

So, the question of the day is this: Will the new president be able or is he willing to resist the tug from those on the far left wing of his own party? 

I am just a single voter, but I’ll offer this: I hope he can and does. I voted for a “good government” presidential candidate, which is what I see in President-elect Biden. By “good government,” I favor a federal government that is prepared to step up and help when needed, but is not willing to capture all the duties and responsibilities assigned to state and local governments, or the private sector.

I sense the president-elect is of the same ilk as yours truly. If that proves out to be the case, then I will be happy.

Meanwhile, the president-elect will have to steel himself for the onslaught of pressure he no doubt will feel from the “democratic socialist” wing of the Democratic Party. To be candid, I still am not sure what a democratic socialist is, other than perhaps being someone who doesn’t want the government to assume control of every aspect of our lives.

Still, I sense in Joe Biden a reluctance to avoid the socialist label, despite what Donald Trump and the GOP sought to attach to him. Trump accused Biden of being “anti-God,” of wanting to take guns away from Americans — while destroying the Second Amendment to the Constitution, of disarming the military, of taxing us into oblivion.

I have looked at Biden’s record and to be honest I don’t see evidence of any of that during his 44 years as a U.S. senator and vice president.

The man is a mainstream Democrat. I want him to govern that way. I am going to hold out hope that he will do as I wish. If not, then he will hear from me. Hey, if he does govern the way I want him to govern, he might still hear from me.

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He no longer matters

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The 2020 presidential election has affirmed what I have thought now for years.

It is that Donald John Trump’s lies no longer matter. He is soon to be gone from the scene. A new president, Joe Biden, will take over on Jan. 20.

Yes, it is clear that Trump remains president until Joe Biden takes the presidential oath. He will be vested with all the power of the office. I merely pray as we watch the clock tick away the final moments of his tenure that he doesn’t do anything foolish. I have no need to explain what such foolishness might entail; I am certain that you get my drift.

As for Trump’s lies, well, I quit listening to them long ago. I accept nothing he says. I do not believe anything that flies out of his lying mouth.

And so we are left with a lame-duck president who is doing nothing to curb the killer virus that is raging across the country; he does nothing to re-engage Congress on a stimulus package to help families stricken by the virus; he does not a single thing to advance our alliances abroad.

Instead, he will foment the phony lie about a rigged election, about “widespread voter fraud” and will continue to insist that he actually “won” the presidential when he actually lost it by the same Electoral College total he won in 2016. Oh, and remember when he called his victory over Hillary Clinton a “landslide”?

Donald Trump is history. For that I am grateful that democracy has worked its magic on a system that cried out for help.

The voters have delivered it.

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How can this election be corrupt?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

All this yammering and blathering from Donald J. Trump about a “rigged election” and “rampant voter fraud” keeps bringing me back to a single question.

Which is this: How in the name of national security, after all this nation endured with Russian hacking of our electoral system in 2016, could there possibly be a more secure election than the one we have just had?

Donald Trump lost his re-election bid to President-elect Joe Biden. His insistence that Biden won only because the election was “rigged” to produce that outcome is far more than laughable on its face. It is dangerous and demeaning.

Trump’s refusal to concede the results of the election is dangerous because it gives comfort to despots around the world who run nations hostile to ours comfort. It well might embolden them to do things that could undermine our national confidence even further. We are taking our eyes off the threats abroad, concerning ourselves with phony allegations of voter fraud.

His refusal also is demeaning to the thousands of state and local election officials who are charged with conducting these elections. They hold the responsibility of protecting our electoral system against “rigging” or other forms of corruption that the president of the United States — our head of state for God’s sake! — keeps suggesting has occurred.

President-elect Biden has a difficult enough task ahead  of him without the idiocy being fomented by his immediate presidential predecessor. That is what this is. It is idiocy of the lowest order.

As President Obama said on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, a president must always put the nation’s interests ahead of his own ego. Donald Trump is being ruled by his fragile sense of self-worth and in the process is putting our entire system of government in potentially dire peril.

And to what end?

If there was any reason to have confidence in the integrity of this election, the foolishness that erupted in 2016 provided it in spades.

Dear folks, we are watching the cultivation by Donald Trump of fake news in real time.

International news

Lift the Muslim ban, Mr. POTUS-elect

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

On the night he declared victory in the 2020 presidential election, Joseph Biden’s team announced plans for the new president to sign a series of executive orders on Day One of his administration.

One of them would be to life a ban on entry into the United States by travelers from certain Muslim-majority nations. Donald Trump issued that order early in his presidential term.

The new president wants to revoke that order. To which I say … yes!

FBI Director Christopher Wray has told us a stark truth about the nature of terrorist threats to this country. It is that the biggest threat comes from home-grown, corn-fed white supremacists and not from Muslim nations.

The new president realizes what the nation’s top cop, the FBI director, has asserted.

I don’t mean to suggest that this nation’s security team should just shrug and look the other way at any terrorist threat that comes from abroad. I do mean to suggest that Donald Trump issued an informal declaration of war against Islam, a point that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama sought assiduously to avoid when they were in office.

President Biden intends to revoke the Trump overstated declaration that Muslim countries pose a hideous threat. If we have learned anything since 9/11 I would presume we have learned how to detect and deal with international terrorist threats, especially from Muslim nations … which renders a ban on travelers from those nations to just an unnecessary show of presidential bravado.