Tag Archives: Election 2020

national news, Uncategorized

POTUS damages democratic process

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Allow me this bit of candor, which is that I hadn’t given much if any thought to whether a president of the United States would actually speak against the democratic process in the country he was elected to govern.

Until now.

Donald Trump is demanding that states that are counting ballots cast in this week’s presidential election should stop the ballot-tabulation process. Yes. The president wants them to stop counting ballots that were cast legally in a free and fair election.

Is there a precedent for this kind of coercion, this sort of bullying? I cannot think of it.

Donald Trump entered the presidency four years ago with no knowledge or experience with government, or with public service. That ignorance is playing out in full view as Donald Trump is being forced inch by inch out of office by the vote totals run up by Joseph Biden, the seeming winner of the presidential election.

Trump is filing court challenges. The courts are routinely dismissing them. The challenges seek to cast aspersions on the legality of the ballots cast; the courts are saying the challenges have no merit.

Trump has taken to Twitter to insist that states stop counting the ballots. He has no singular authority to make such a demand. But he persists and adds to his already shameful conduct.

We will get through all of this eventually. I am waiting with bated breath for a declaration that we will have a president-elect who then can commence the transition from chaos to collegiality within our federal government.

As for Trump, it falls on him to decide whether he will exit the office with dignity and pledge the traditional “peaceful transition of power” to Joe Biden and his team … or whether he will continue to conduct himself in a manner that brings abject shame and ridicule.

national news

Are you surprised to hear this news?

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I just have to ask: How many of us were really surprised to awaken today to the news that Donald and Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus?

Not me. I mean, c’mon! The president speaks of the pandemic as if it’s “under control,” he dismisses the wearing of masks, he hold rallies with crowds of adoring fans packed shoulder to shoulder in front of him and one of his closest aides, Hope Hicks, tests positive for the virus.

Now, having said that, I do not want the first couple to suffer grievously from the disease. Accordingly, I was pleased to learn this morning that their young son, Barron, tested negative; so let’s hope the youngster keeps his good health.

However, the very notion that Donald Trump would be so terribly dismissive of the pandemic and would mock Joe Biden — the Democratic nominee who is running against him — for wearing a mask only tempts me to say, “I told you so.”

I won’t speak specifically to what this bombshell news will do to the presidential campaign. It’s too early to tell whether it will sound the death knell for Trump’s effort to get re-elected.

The news, though, should bring the administration’s non-response to the pandemic back to the top of voters’ awareness. Trump’s mishandling of the initial response now has been essentially validated by Trump’s own words, as he spoke them to Washington Post reporter/editor Bob Woodward. He knew initially that the pandemic would kill many Americans, but lied to the public about the looming threat.

Trump has sought to change the subject. He cannot possibly change it now.

My wish is for Trump and the first lady to get well … and then for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to defeat him handily on Election Day.

The time has come for some truth-telling at the White House.

national news

Trump should alarm us all

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It is no stretch at all to suggest that Donald Trump is setting up multiple alarm bells over his statements related to a “peaceful transition” from one administration to the next one if he loses the presidential election.

The election is 40 days out. Joe Biden continues to show considerable strength in most public opinion polling. He is strong in the states he needs to win the Electoral College and, thus, be elected president.

That isn’t derailing Trump’s dangerous talk about refusing to commit to a peaceful transition, or his efforts to suppress voter turnout, or his call to “throw out ballots” that he says would guarantee he would stay in office.

Indeed, this dangerous rhetoric has prompted the U.S. Senate to pass a resolution proclaiming its strong intention to ensure that a transition, were it to occur, would be done in a manner befitting our great republic: peacefully and without tumult.

Trump’s danger to the republic is on full display as the campaign heads toward the stretch run. He intends to cheat his way to a second term.

Look at what he’s done already: He has sought help from Ukraine in digging up dirt on Biden; he has continued to dismiss assertions from the FBI and other intelligence experts that Russia is interfering in our election as it did in 2016; he asserts without proof that mail-in voting is fraught with corruption that it breeds “rampant voter fraud”; he has said publicly that a Biden victory would mean the election is “rigged.”

When have we ever heard a president say these things? Hmm. How about, oh, never!

Donald Trump is a menace to the Constitution he took an oath to defend and protect. He is a danger to the very electoral system of which he took advantage to win the presidency four years ago. Trump is a danger to our system of government.

This man needs to lose this election, He needs to lose big. Trump needs to pack his bags and exit the White House.

national news

Fright is setting in

I don’t want to sound alarmist.

However, I am getting filled with astonishing feelings of fright at the prospect of a second presidential term with Donald John Trump sitting in the Oval Office.

I don’t scare easily, so this isn’t some sort of Chicken Little screed. The very notion that Donald Trump could actually win a second term is filling me with dread. It’s the real thing, man. I mean it!

Trump took office without a single moment of public service experience under his belt. His entire adult life was aimed at self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. He took that experience with him into the White House.

The man doesn’t possess an ounce of empathy or compassion. I mean, my goodness, he admits to preferring to trample over people than to hold them up.

Trump’s lack of public service experience has been coupled with his abject ignorance of the government over which he presides. He talks about enacting “bills” all by himself. Remember when he told the Republican convention in Cleveland that “I, alone” can solve the nation’s ills? He cannot. That hasn’t stopped him from continuing to imply such a moronic strategy.

We’re now well into the 2020 presidential campaign. I have not yet heard a single coherent statement that speaks to how he wants to govern during a second term. He continues to spend his entire re-election campaign effort at denigrating his Democratic foe, Joe Biden. Where’s the plan for governing, Donald? It ain’t there.

So are we going to expose ourselves to four more years of the kind of (non)leadership we’ve gotten during the past four years? Are we going to hand this president an invitation to do anything he thinks he can do without recrimination?

My goodness, we cannot allow this guy to send in federal “agents” to put down protests in our cities. We can’t allow him to “dominate the streets” with “heavily armed” troops. We cannot allow this individual to assault his foes using language that to my ears sounds overtly racist.

This clown snookered too many of us in 2016. A lot of us saw this disaster coming the moment he announced his candidacy at Trump Tower. I happen to one of those who now is frightened at the possibility that this guy could fool too many of us once again.

medical news

We’re entering a phase of one issue eclipsing all others

It’s just me, perhaps, but I’ll offer this perspective anyway: It seems that we have entered a phase in which one issue renders all others petty and picayune.

The world is becoming swallowed up by the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly all of our 50 states now report cases. The president is trying to get his footing, but so far is failing to tell us the whole truth about what to expect.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is running for re-election. He is canceling rallies. So are the two major Democratic candidates still running for president.

There’s plenty of important matters going on right now. I consider the presidential campaign to be a big deal. Except that in the current environment and in the context of the health crisis that is growing all over the planet, the campaign seems decidedly less important than it otherwise would seem to be.

Our focus is riveted on where it needs to be. We need to deal with this coronavirus matter. I need to ensure continued good health in our household and in the households of those we love dearly.

So I am going to focus more on that and less on the politics of the moment. I won’t ignore that other stuff. It’s going to have to be pretty big, though, to get my attention.

Stay tuned … and stay well.

International news

British diplomat states the obvious: Trump is inept

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I am inclined to tell the British ambassador to the United States: Tell us something many on this side of The Pond don’t know.

Leaked memos from Ambassador Kim Darroch reveal a point of view that the Donald Trump administration is incompetent, inept, unpredictable, unreliable and untrustworthy.

Gosh. Who knew?

According to National Public Radio: “We don’t really believe this Administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept,” the ambassador wrote in leaked documents, according to the Daily Mail.

Even though what Darroch wrote in the memos dating back to 2017 aren’t exactly a flash for many millions of Americans, it is news chiefly because it comes from the ambassador of one of this nation’s staunchest, most reliable and valuable allies. The Brits have stood with us through thick, thin, warfare and peace.

Now to read these remarks only serve to undermine that relationship. It’s not because of anything the British have done. Ambassador Darroch is responding to the chaos and confusion that fuels damn near everything that occurs with the Trump administration.

Darroch wrote that the administration could “collapse,” but warned “do not write (Trump) off.” Indeed, the carnival barker/president has proven to have many more lives than any cat that’s ever lived.

Still, many millions of us hope that voters in this country will wise up to the mistake many of our fellow Americans made in 2016 by electing Trump to be president in the first place.

I am one of those Americans who hopes Election Day 2020 fixes that egregious mistake.