Tag Archives: GOP

national news

Character still matters

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Do you remember a time when Republican politicians recited the mantra that “character matters”?

I do. It became vogue when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton sought to become president in 1992. Republicans got wind of some alleged indiscretions involving the young governor. They whipped it all into a frenzied rally cry that sought to undermine the candidate’s presidential aspirations.

Well, character still matters. Except that Republicans have gone deaf and blind on what the rest of us have seen about a prominent GOP politician. That would be … umm, Donald J. Trump.

The former POTUS is an admitted sexual assailant; an admitted philanderer; he has denigrated prisoners of war, calling them “suckers” and “losers.”

Character, anyone? Yeah, it still matters now just as it did in the early 1990s when Republicans sought to make character an issue in another presidential campaign.

Except that these days the GOP is turning away while one of its own flouts the very institutions he once vowed to preserve and protect. His lack of character also revealed itself when he disparaged a great American, Colin Powell, only hours after the great man’s death.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

How can this loser actually win?

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A whole array of political brainiacs are offering a chilling bit of news that foreshadows the 2024 Republican Party primary contest.

It is that Donald John Trump, the twice-impeached loser, is the odds-on favorite — as of this moment — to win the GOP nomination.

Let’s ponder that one for just a moment.

For starters, I am not yet convinced he is going to run for POTUS. He might find his sorry rear end indicted on felony charges relating to the 2020 election and his attempts to subvert the results that produced a victory for President Biden.

Setting that aside, are the GOP faithful actually so committed to this idiot to nominate him for a third consecutive election cycle to the presidency? He failed in his single term.

He lied incessantly. He botched the nation’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic; he kept secret from the public information he had learned privately about the severity of the illness. Time and time and time again he said things that contradicted the experts he brought aboard ostensibly to help him do battle against the pandemic.

Trump spoke correctly about becoming a “wartime president,” but then didn’t act on it.

Literally dozens of this guy’s inner circle have been indicted and some have been convicted of illegal activity. Yes, these were among the “best people” he pledged to help him govern.

Are we really going to head down that path yet again with a Republican nominee who cannot tell the truth, who cannot negotiate, who cannot strike deals, who doesn’t know the first thing about governance?

Man, I hope the political intelligentsia is all wrong as it examines the possible future of a once-great and viable political party.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Both sides need to talk … to each other

Fairness dictates that I make this complaint of Democratic politicians just as I did of Republican politicians during the previous presidential administration.

I want Democrats to talk to Republicans and I am terribly distressed that they aren’t reaching to the other side of the great divide.

Think back to the term of Donald J. Trump. The Republican president chose to speak only to fellow Rs on Capitol Hill. He allowed the GOP caucus to craft that tax cut bill that favored rich folks. Democrats wanted no part of the deal. The then-POTUS didn’t reach out to them. He stiffed ’em!

That guy is gone. The new president, Joe Biden, has resorted to talking mainly to Democrats on his Build Back Better agenda. Indeed, GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell has made his point clear: Ain’t no way the Republicans are going to support anything that comes from a Democratic president. President Biden figures: What the hell is the point in talking to them?

Well, I believe he should. Just as I believe that his predecessor should have talked to Democrats in search of common ground.

I have spoken of late about “good government.” This is how government ought to work. Compromise is not a four-letter word.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

military news

Back off … chumps!

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There’s something off-putting about watching politicians grill battle-hardened military men in search of what I consider to be cheap political points.

That’s what I saw today as three distinguished warriors sat before a Senate committee to be questioned about their role in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Let me be clear about a key point. I subscribe wholly to the notion that civilian authority must remain central to the conduct of our military policy. However, when I watch politicians seek to dress down men of valor, well … it turns me off.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a former Army four-star general, was one of the targets of the chumps serving on the Senate panel; so was Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; same for Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commanding officer of Central Command, which has coordinates all military activity in Afghanistan and the surrounding region.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, sought to get Milley to admit whether he spoke to authors of books that have looked critically at the last days of the Donald Trump administration. Milley answered “yes” that he had spoken to the authors. Blackburn then asked whether he supported what they wrote. Milley said he hasn’t read any of the books.

That wasn’t good enough for Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, who then asked whether Milley was too busy being interviewed by the likes of Bob Woodward and Robert Costa to pay attention to the details of the Afghan War withdrawal. Hawley, ever the showman, then demanded that Milley and Austin resign their posts.

Ridiculous!

All three of these men have served their country with honor, valor and distinction. Milley has taken heat because of reporting in the book “Peril” that he gave his counterpart in China a heads up in the event of a potential attack by the United States in the waning days of the Trump administration. Good grief! He acted nobly as he sought to protect the United States against potential catastrophe!

Politics fuels everything these days. Hawley wants to run for president. He wants to make waves within the GOP so he takes this opportunity to question the integrity of genuine Americans heroes.

Disgusting.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

‘GOP’ takes new meaning

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Attention, my friends in the Republican Party.

Your political organization, once known as the Grand Old Party, has acquired a new moniker. It’s called the Grubby Obstructionist Party.

Yes, the party that once was able to govern effectively working with Democrats in Congress and the White House, has become a party intent on furthering some nitwit political agenda.

The GOP has decided to block moves to bump up the debt ceiling. It won’t allow the nation to pay its bills. It is going to block President Biden’s Build Back Better legislative package — which would be paid out over several years. It is now threatening to shut down the government … again! Why? Because its intention is to do harm to a duly elected president.

Democrats are scrambling at this moment to figure out a way to work around their GOP colleagues, the same colleagues who saw no problem with boosting the debt ceiling when one of their guys was in the White House and when they controlled the legislative branch of government.

Now it’s changed. Except that it hasn’t really changed. The obligations are the same now as they always have been.

The Grubby Obstructionist Party — whose U.S. Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said the debt ceiling must be increased but won’t allow his Senate GOP caucus to be part of it — has shown itself to be unfit to govern.

Disgraceful.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Will No. 45 be nominated?

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Some pundits/commentators/thinkers I respect a great deal are throwing a major scare into this old man’s body.

They are suggesting that at this moment Donald J. Trump is the “favorite” to be nominated by the Republican Party to run for president in 2024.

Let’s ponder that for just a brief moment.

The House of Representatives impeached him twice. The first time was for soliciting political favors from a foreign government; a clear violation of the law, not to mention the Constitution. The second time was for inciting an insurrection against the government as Congress sought to ratify the Electoral College returns from the 2020 presidential election; another clearly defined “high crime and misdemeanor.”

He skated twice because not enough Senate Republicans had enough courage to stand by their oaths of office and convict him.

The former POTUS has hijacked the GOP. He is holding it hostage to his whims and machinations. He is the man, the myth, the legend in his own mind.

He is making noises about wanting to run again.

If he does and if the GOP is flat-out stupid enough to nominate this clown once again — after all the damage he has inflicted on the government he once vowed to protect — then, ladies and gents, we are in far more trouble than I ever imagined.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news, State news

Ex-POTUS turns his phony fraud case to Texas

The Donald Trump phony vote fraud fishing expedition has cast its line into our neighborhood.

What a … joke!

The Texas secretary of state’s office, kowtowing to demands from the former Liar in Chief’s team, has announced an audit of 2020 presidential election returns in four of the state’s largest counties: Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Collin. Three of the four counties have something in common: Voters in Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties cast most of their votes for Joe Biden; Collin County, where my wife and I live, voted narrowly for Biden’s opponent, the 45th POTUS.

Not surprisingly, officials in the three pro-Biden counties have proclaimed it a political ploy. Collin County Judge Chris Hill — a Republican and a supporter of the 45th POTUS — so far is silent. Imagine that, eh?

This is an exercise in grotesque stupidity.

Texas 2020 election audits called political ploy by county officials | The Texas Tribune

The former POTUS carried Texas by about 5 percentage points. He now is demanding that Gov. Greg Abbott add a “forensic audit” of the state’s returns to the Texas Legislature’s special session agenda.

What the former Numbskull in Chief continues to do is denigrate the hard work of county elections officials in those counties — along with those who worked in all the rest of the state — who produced a patently safe, fraud-free, legal and fair election.

How many times must we all say this: There was no “widespread voter fraud” in Texas! However, the Big Lie lives on in what passes for the minds of the cultists who swill the poison being served by the former POTUS.

This is a disgrace to our democratic form of government.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national security, political news

Yearning for GOP return

Am I allowed to declare that I am yearning for a significant political revolution?

I am going to do so anyway. I want the Republican Party to return to what it used to be: a party based on principle and ideology, not one that is fused to the personality of a cult leader who threatens real Republicans with retribution if they don’t profess blind loyalty to him.

Let’s stipulate something up front. I have no intention of endorsing whatever ideology a newly reborn Republican Party endorses. I remain a proud member of what I prefer to call the “good government progressive movement.” My politics tilt left, but I am not above endorsing compromise when and where it serves the greatest good.

The GOP today doesn’t adhere to the good government notion of anything. It is wedded to this nut job who occupied the presidency for a single term before he got drummed out of office by President Biden.

Why lament the absence of a real, honest-to-goodness Republican Party? Because I long have favored a strong two-party system that keeps both major parties alert. We don’t have that kind of political process at work at this moment. We have one party of ideas — the Democrats — doing battle with a cult following that operates under the Republican Party banner.

For starters, I now shall declare (for the umpteenth time) my intense desire for the leader of that cult — the aforementioned single-term, twice-impeached POTUS — to be kicked off the political stage.

Then we might see a return to some sort of political debate over ideas. Let the two parties argue without fear of being defamed, denigrated and defiled by a former POTUS who — if he had any sense of decency — would acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election … and then disappear.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Waiting for bipartisan thaw

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My patience has its limits, but I am going to give it some more time to bear fruit.

I had hoped that the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States would produce a spirit of bipartisanship we hadn’t seen since, oh, about the time of 9/11. It hasn’t happened.

President Bush handed the office over to President Obama in 2009 and the divisions persisted after the Iraq War dragged on and on. President Obama didn’t make much headway, either, particularly after Sen. Mitch McConnell — the Republican leader — said his No. 1 priority was to make Obama a “one-term president.” President Obama finished his second term in 2017 and handed it off to, umm, the 45th POTUS. It got even worse during the Liar/Numskull/Nitwit/Insurrectionist in Chief’s single term in office.

He vacated the White House earlier this year without so much as a goodbye wave at President Biden’s inaugural. He skulked off without attending his successor’s inauguration.

Biden brought 36 years of U.S. Senate experience and eight years as vice president to the White House. He knows how to play the bipartisan game. He did it with considerable flair during his Senate years.

Alas, all that experience hasn’t played well in the GOP, which has latched onto the Big Lie about phony election theft and vote fraud.

For crying out loud, we cannot even cross the partisan divide on the best way to rid us of a killer virus that has cost us more than 600,000 lives! Biden and his fellow Democrats sing the virtues of masks and vaccines while Republicans and assorted conspiracy lunatics denigrate mask-wearing and question the value of getting vaccinated. Sheesh!

I am going to wish that President Biden can find a way to cross the partisan divide. My hope and my expectation, though, are growing farther apart.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

No truer words, Gov. Christie

“No man, no woman, no matter what office they’ve held or wealth they’ve acquired, are worthy of blind faith or obedience.”

Do you know who said that? If not, I’ll tell you.

Those words come from former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a one-time foe of the 45th president of the United States, who became an ally of his during  his term in office, and who now seems to be reverting to his former truth-telling self.

Christie spoke Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, site of a symposium on the future of the Republican Party.

Of course he is right about blind fealty to an individual. No political organization can survive if it attaches itself to the whims and wishes of one person, which the GOP has done as it gloms onto the dictates of the twice-impeached former POTUS.

Sadly, given the climate in which we now are living, the Kool-Aid swilling cabal of loyalists are winning the argument within the once-great Republican Party.

Christie also said this at the Reagan Library: “Pretending we won when we lost is a waste of time, and energy and credibility.” Ah, yes. Credibility. That’s the biggest and most important “waste” cited by the former New Jersey governor.

Christie Decries Focus on Lying, Conspiracies in Stinging Rebuke of GOP (msn.com)

Then again, the former Liar in Chief, the chief purveyor of the Big Lie, has zero credibility anyway … at least among us who saw him for what he was when he entered presidential politics in the summer of 2015. We saw him as a phony and a fraud, but someone quite capable of hijacking a political party — which he continues to do.

I fear Gov. Christie is piddling into the wind while trying to persuade the GOP of the dire need to change course. My bigger fear is that the truth he is telling will be translated into another lie that the cultists who adhere to POTUS 45 will use to their perverted advantage.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com